


Free to be You and Me

by Kindris



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, BAMFs, Brainwashing, Free Range Hawkeye, Friendship, Gen, Identity Issues, Psychological Torture, Torture, Whump, non aou compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-21 01:32:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 44,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1532780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kindris/pseuds/Kindris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the man who used to be James Buchanan Barnes wants is to be left alone, to be able to choose who he is for himself. If only he could get rid of the memories he doesn't recognise, and the man who insists he's a friend, then he'd be free.</p><p> </p><p>"You don't care who you are, so long as you're a good person. Here's a pro-tip for you. Good people don't let HYDRA use Captain America as a chew toy because they're holding a grudge."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The day Steve Rogers was declared fit for international travel, he got home to a kicked in door, a ransacked apartment, and a note stuck to his kitchen worktop with the largest knife he owned.

 

His shield was off his back and on his arm in a second, the skin on the back of his neck prickling. He half expected to see Fury slumped in the chair again, battered and bruised; the damn mess with SHIELD/HYDRA about to begin again in a loop, like that film with the groundhog.

 

The pinned paper fluttered in the draught from his newly smashed windows. He stepped lightly around the broken glass, careful not to make a sound. Whoever’d done this could still be there, might have heard him in the hallway, might be waiting for him to make a noise and reveal his position.

 

He winced at the slightest squeak of his shoes and the rustle of his clothes. His heart hammered against his chest as he made sure the room was clear. His drawers were opened, every cupboard tossed and his bookshelf wrecked, but the room was empty.

 

He checked the bathroom next. It was in the same state; the contents of the medicine cabinet strewn across the floor, surrounded by shards of the newly broken mirror. His shower curtain was slashed to pieces too and the bath was cracked.

 

Closing the door silently, he tuned his senses to anything he couldn’t recognise. The fridge buzzed quietly, the wind blew though the apartment. There was the muted growl of car engines with the occasional blare of a horn and -

_There!_

 

There, a rattle from his bedroom. He crept towards it. He peered through the slightly open door, but couldn’t see anything. He let out a slow breath and eased to one side of the doorframe, opening the door fully with one hand, half ready for the sound of gunfire.

 

Nothing happened. There were no new noises, no sound of movement other than the little clattering sound. He could see two corners of the room. Both were empty. Whatever was rattling hit the floor with a bang.

 

Steve burst through the door. His blood was rushing, his muscles tense and ready. The shield covered most of his body as he searched for an intruder.

 

The room was clear.

 

The adrenaline drained out of Steve in seconds, his shoulders slumping and his shield arm dropping down to his side. He sank onto the wall, letting out a long sigh. On the floor, some gadget Stark gave him was askew, rolling across the wooden surface in the light breeze. It must have fallen off of his bedside table. More paper littered the floor, drawings from old sketch books he’d finished which’d been up on his walls. A ruined picture of Howard drifted to a stop against his boot.

 

That was it. Just a trashed apartment. No assassins, no Hydra come to finish the job, no Winter Soldier waiting with haunted eyes and a bullet with his name on it. Suddenly he felt utterly exhausted, and his still healing scars throbbed painfully.

 

He trudged back to the kitchen, tossing the shield onto his couch. Time to find out who held such a grudge against him they’d tear up his shower curtain, tear down his drawings and steal his only lead on the Hydra base in Ukraine.

 

He didn’t need to check that it was missing. Even though whoever’d done it tore his apartment to pieces after, it was easy enough to notice what was gone, and what wasn’t. His tv was still there, all his Stark brand tech remained untouched, as well as his latest sketchbook. That alone would be worth a fortune to the right people, but there is was, sitting open on his floor, crumpled but whole. The pages were turning in the wind, flickering snapshots of his past. A study he’d made of the Howling Commandoes looked like it had a boot print on it.

 

That document was the only other thing of value he had, and the drawer in his coffee table that’d housed the only known dossier on the Winter Soldier project was open and vacant.

 

It wasn’t as big a blow as it could have been. Steve had memorised most of the data, sickening as it was, and he’d sent Sam the information on the base near Kiev already. Racing against someone else to find out what happened to Bucky wasn’t something he’d counted on though. Now every second he wasted was time someone else could be using to destroy his answers.

 

He plucked the note from the counter, ripping it out from under the knife. It was short.

 

 

 

_ Don’t look for me. _

_WS_

 

 

\--(x)-- 8 Days Later, Outside Kiev, Ukraine

 

 

Their first problem was getting into the country. Natasha provided a few ideas on how to get past the border, but the unrest in the area meant even her best ideas had a very fine margin for error. They ended up sneaking over the border from Moldova and travelling north, avoiding any trouble they ran across. It rankled Steve to do so, but fighting another countries’ battles whilst he was illegally on their soil was one can of worms he couldn’t afford to open. Natasha had drilled one rule into them; avoid being seen at all costs.

 

The second problem lay in finding the old complex. The location in the Polesia was huge. It was densely forested in some places, swampy and open in others and peppered with tiny towns all over. For the most part, Steve relied on Sam to scout the areas from overhead, and if he found anywhere promising, he’d radio Steve to take a closer look.

 

They’d found the first traces of a partially obscured road the day before, around noon, and traced it to the site. The rest of their time was spent gathering as much intel as they could about the base. There were three gates, thick metal and barbed wire, guard houses and three above ground buildings; each one constructed out of thick block wall and steel frames. They were ugly, but functional. There was definitely more underground, the file on the Winter Soldier detailed part of it, mentioning cryo-chambers, operating theatres and oblique references to memory tampering machines. Unfortunately whilst Steve’s memory was incredible, it wasn’t photographic, and the documents didn’t detail the entrance to the secret area of the base. So they started observing the personnel.

 

That was when they discovered the third problem.

 

“They’re abandoning ship,” Sam surmised. A few vans, some flatbeds and one eighteen wheeler truck came and went as they watched through the relative cover of the trees. There was no mistaking the pattern of movement. Everything was getting loaded up by harried looking security guards and supervisors, directed by a tall man in a lab coat.

 

“Guess the increased mobility of the army spooked them.” Steve speculated.

 

“And they don’t want a bunch of civilians with machine guns getting their hands on a make-your-own-super-soldier machine.” Sam said wryly.

 

“That equipment was probably the first to get moved out of the area. It looks like they’re still stripping the equipment out. We should be able to infiltrate the site and recover the research materials if we work quickly.”

 

“If they’re still there.” Sam looked sceptical at the idea.

 

“If they’re still there.” Steve acknowledged.

 

 

\--(x)--

 

 

By dusk, it became clear there wasn’t going to be a fool proof plan. There wouldn’t even be a _good_ plan. The staff scurried around the site like panicking ants, and every hour more material was being taken away. Sam put a call through to Natasha to try and track the vehicles via satellite, which was proving a daunting task. Without SHIELD as backup, hijacking a signal from anything more useful than Google Earth was a chore. Contact with Tony Stark was also proving elusive.

 

“Limited communications? This the same Tony Stark we’re talking about?” Sam questioned.

 

“It is. He’s been sorting through a few issues recently-” Natasha began.

 

“I heard. PTSD right? Granted most people don’t start the road to recovery by rescuing the President from terrorists, but life’s more interesting when you’re a superhero.” Sam juggled the phone and his pack, heavy with his wings, camping supplies and what he was currently looking for, food. He jerked up when he heard feet scuffing the dirt near the edge of the clearing, but it was only Steve, who looked at him quizzically.

 

“Natasha?” He mouthed. Sam gave him a thumbs up. Steve nodded back and set about digging around in his own gear.

 

“You’re just realising that? You’re not rethinking your position on backing up Cap are you, Falcon?”

 

“You kidding? This is the most fun I’ve had in years. When I was young I used to read Captain America comic books, now I’m living one. I’m not giving this up.” A protein bar hit him in the face. Sam suppressed a laugh as Steve looked at him with raised eyebrows and a wry smile. 

 

“Shall I sign you up for therapy now, or later?” Sam decided at this moment he’d never play poker with Natasha. He was only about forty percent sure she was joking. Well; maybe more like thirty.

 

“Later, after you’ve told me why Iron Man is playing at being a hermit all of a sudden.”

 

“Those issues I mentioned involved Stark totalling almost all of his armour.” Natasha sighed. Steve wandered over and huddled up with Sam by the handset.

 

“The fight got that bad?” Sam said.

 

“No, he did that all by himself. Call it a gesture of affection for Miss Potts.” Natasha said in a bored tone.

 

“And he’s been offline since then?”

 

“Not quite. Let’s say since his little stunt with the exploding armour, Pepper has been a bit firmer about the hours he spends in the workshop. His being offline means he’s violated her very generous timeslot.”

 

“So Tony Stark has been put on the naughty step?” Sam said.

 

“That’s accurate. I’ve been trying to get Happy to put me in touch with Jarvis, but he’s not quite mastered the hold button yet, let alone transferring a call. I’ve made some progress alone, but it’s slow. Looks like you don’t have to be a brain in a jar to outsmart me. Surprised Rogers?”

 

“Wh-”

 

“I can hear you breathing.” Sam and Steve shared a glance. “I’ll keep working things from this end. You two have fun storming the castle.”

 

“I get that reference,” Steve interjected, but she was already gone. Sam shook his head, laughing incredulously at Steve’s wounded expression.

 

“I could call her back.”

 

“Shut up,” Steve said, grinning as he shoved Sam over. He stood up, shaking his shoulders out and looking in the direction of the base. His eyes narrowed, and Steve shifted into Captain America. “Time to get our heads in the game.”

 

Sam dusted himself off and grabbed the protein bar from the floor.

 

“Absolutely. So, how are we going to play this?” He unwrapped the food as Steve pulled out a pad of paper from his bag and showed him a map he’d made of base.

 

“We’ll wait for full dark. There’s plenty of cover, and if we follow this pattern-” He drew a steady line on the map, “we should be able keep out of the floodlights and avoid detection until we get inside this building. Most of the material is being moved from there, it’s a safe bet that’s where we’ll find the intel we’re looking for.”

 

“Knowing Hydra, and it’s still weird to say that by the way, they’ll keep the good stuff locked down, if it’s not already gone. It’d be guarded by something more like Strike than your average security guard too. Between that and the fact we haven’t got any idea about the subterranean layout, we’re looking at a big disadvantage here.” Sam pointed out.

 

“I’m working on the assumption that most of the heavy hitters will probably be in convoy with the machinery, leaving the rest less protected.”

 

“It did look like they hired most of the WWE to drive those trucks around.” Sam mused with a mouthful of food, “But less protection won’t mean no protection.”

 

“True.” Steve considered the best course of action. “We should split up to cover the most ground. The radios Natasha supplied us with should work in the tunnels, but that doesn’t help us if we’re too far away from each other to provide back up.”

 

“If one of us gets in over our heads, we should retreat to a rendezvous point on the surface. I can provide air support from there, and they haven’t got anything remotely flight capable from the looks of things. Advantage good guys.”

 

“Good point. There’s a communications station here,” he motioned to one of the smaller squares on his map, “We’ll have to neutralise it on our way in. It’ll make a good fallback position if we need it.”

 

“Communications? How’d you figure that out?”

 

“The base reminds me of a similar one in Italy. There’s also a small array of aerials and satellites wired into it, they’re located on a decoy structure.”

 

“It reminded you of a base in Italy, in the 1940’s? Do Hydra bases have that kind of consistency?” Sam glanced down at the site plan again. “Might not even matter. If I remember right, your first mission was going blind into a Hydra base, and you managed it without a tour guide.” He joked.

 

Steve’s expression shuttered. For a moment his ears were ringing from being far too close to an explosion, the smell of dust and smoke was everywhere and on the other side of a warehouse his best friend was screaming that he wouldn’t leave him.

 

“Cap?” Steve blinked and the memory was gone.

 

“You know, Hydra could be pretty predictable sometimes. I guess it’s a side effect of wanting everything neat and efficient. There was one weapons repository near Marseille that had everything signposted, in three different languages.”

 

Sam snorted with laughter. “Even you wouldn’t be able to get lost in there.” Steve gave him a wounded look.

 

“Lost? I might as well be a homing pigeon. Chalk another one up for being a super soldier.”

 

“Says the man who took a seventy year long wrong turn in Greenland.” Sam joked lightly, dusting his hands free of crumbs. “Maybe we should put a homing beacon on you, just in case. Or maybe something a bit more low tech. How do you feel about a collar with a bell on it?”

 

“Not exactly stealthy,” Steve chuckled.

 

“Maybe a tattoo then, ‘If found please return to-”

 

“Don’t say the Avengers Tower.” Steve groaned. “Limited tech or not, somehow Stark will somehow be listening to this and find a way to make it happen.”

 

“See, that sounds like experience talking. Has Stark got something on tape? You’re Captain America man; have you ever even done anything blackmail worthy?” Steve gave him a sheepish look.

 

“Well, this one time I-”

 

An explosion ripped through the evening air. The ground trembled with the force of it, and alarms were quick to follow, screaming in the twilight. Sam snatched his wings from his pack as Steve grabbed his shield, both looking over to where a flare of flickering orange lit up the night.

 

“Someone’s started the party without us.” Sam commented, strapping himself into the flight harness. Captain America checked his weapons. Five minutes later, as Sam snapped his goggles into place, they were ready.

 

“Let’s gatecrash.”

 

 

\--(x)--

 

 

The base was a mess. One building was almost completely turned to ashes, the smoky air heavy with the tang of burning mould and damp. Just inside the gate Steve could see their first objective, the communications array, was a smouldering pile of rubble.

 

The building most intact was the one they thought held the entrance to the underground part of the site. Steve led the way, ducking behind a stack of steel containers as more people ran past them, a mousy looking scientist stopping to grab hold of a man who slipped and fell. Another man helped her and they carried their fallen companion away together, not even stopping when glasses fell from the woman’s face. Steve waited until the last of the stragglers had gone by before motioning to Sam to continue. They got hallway to the doors before having to throw themselves behind a truck for cover. Around twelve armed Hydra guards pelted past, completely missing them.

 

Steve motioned for them to continue. The doors to the complex were already smashed in, the first room Steve could see was clear. Blood streaked one of the walls, the trail disappearing behind an overturned table. Their mystery assailant had definitely come this way. Before they could head any deeper into the building, the sound of muted gunfire permeated the air. They both ducked into cover, but the shots weren’t directed at them. Sam stood, squinting into the darkness.

 

The smoke drifting over the site parted like a curtain in the soft breeze. The gate they’d watched everyone running to was lit by tiny bursts of light, and dark shadows fell against the fire lit night. Sam felt something icy settle into his stomach.

 

“Steve, I don’t think everyone here was Hydra.”

 

“They must have been prisoners.” Steve adjusted his shield on his arm, his face grim. “We can’t let them die, not if they’re innocent.”

 

“I’ll go.” Sam checked his machine pistols. Satisfied, he started towards the massacre. Steve caught him by the arm.

 

“Hey, you’re not going alone.”

 

“Yeah, I am. I’ll save them, and you’re not coming with me.” Sam knocked Steve’s hand away.

 

“Sam,” Steve started.

 

“No time to waste.” Sam clapped him on the shoulder, ran out of the doors and took off. Steve grabbed his radio.

 

“I got your back; you target the ones closest to the civilians-”

 

“Cap, I got this.” Sam’s voiced was hard to make out over the wind as he flew. “I can take on a few guys with guns. You trusted me to take on a helicarrier before, remember that?” 

 

“But-”

 

“Look, Cap, we both know who’s down there, waiting for you. You go get your friend back, we’ll rendezvous later. Now, I don’t know how many people you’ve got to rescue before you qualify to be an avenger, but I’m going to try and get my quota filled. Falcon out.”

 

Steve watched the Falcon disappear into the inky cloud of smoke that masked the gate before turning towards the tunnel and the stairs that led deeper into the base.

 

Time to find the Winter Soldier.


	2. Chapter 2

Finding his way through the tunnels was as easy as following the trail of bodies. Steve sidestepped a still warm corpse with a neat red hole on one temple, another with a red line of blood across the throat. The flickering fluorescent lights bathed the bare walls in a sickly yellow glow, the fresh blood showing up rusty orange under it.

 

Steve checked the face of each dead man he passed. Despite the bloody path leading away from his position he couldn’t help feeling the smallest thrill of fear that maybe, one of the dead might be Bucky. None of them were, but the heavy feeling in his gut remained.

 

It could be dread. It could be anticipation, nerves, gas, anything. At least the reason for it remained clear enough. Bucky was here, waiting for him at the end of all this.

 

The Winter Soldier tried to kill him. A lot. He came within a hair of succeeding.

 

But Bucky saved him. When he knew he’d failed, that Bucky was gone and never coming back; when he’d been sure he was dead by the hands of a man he’d loved like a brother, when he’d fallen… Bucky had jumped after him. Bucky pulled him out of the river, got him to shore and – nothing. That stung.

 

Somewhere in his mind nestled the impossible memory of a metal hand reaching out to him in the dark. Steve clung to that. His friend was in there somewhere, hurting and alone. He could find him. He would help him.

 

How the hell was he going to help him?

 

A Hydra soldier sat slumped against a rotten wooden door at the corridors end. Steve shoved the dead man aside, entering the room.

 

It was an archive, exactly the kind Steve had been hoping to find. There were filing cabinets everywhere, dented and knocked over, most of the empty. The room had already been gutted.

 

He examined a file hanging out of one of the drawings, but the page numbers skipped from one to three to fifteen and he put it back. Some of the papers were already shredded and trodden into the floor like spent confetti.

 

The bare bulb guttered, clinking as the light began to fail. Steve turned from the cabinet, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling. He was being watched. The light flickered, he blinked and Bucky stood front of him, arms crossed and a cold look in his eyes. Steve felt his breath stutter to a stop in his chest.

 

He looked awful. His eyes were bloodshot; his skin pale, drawn and dirty. Steve swallowed, trying to find his voice.

 

“Looks like someone figured we were coming for this stuff.” His eyes flicked around the room before settling on Bucky again. He hadn’t moved. For a long moment they stood opposite each other, the drip of damp punctuating to silence. Steve cracked first. Lowering his shield, he leant back again the filing cabinet, ignoring Bucky’s glare, and the cabinet creaking. He tried to find some way to appear relaxed, to try and seem calm. He had never been a good liar. “You find what you were looking for?”

 

“It’s gone.” Bucky sounded about as good as he looked. Steve wondered if he’d spoken a word since he’d called him his mission. 

 

“I’m sorry,” He said. Bucky shook his head, his hair a greasy curtain in front of his eyes.

 

“You wouldn’t be. Not if you knew what I was looking for.”

 

“You’re trying to find yourself, right?” Steve tried. “Trying to find out who you were before you were the Winter Soldier.”

 

“No.” The word solidified the feeling of wrongness in Steve’s gut into a block of ice.

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” came the sullen reply.

 

“Listen, I don’t know how much you remember, or what you were hoping to find here. I just – Whatever it is, I want to help you.”

 

“You can’t.” Bucky spat. Steve frowned.

 

“I can. We grew up together, whatever it is you’re missing, I can help you get it back,”

 

“Get out of here, before I make you leave.”

 

 Steve stood a little taller.

 

“No. Not without you.”

 

Bucky’s face dropped into a snarl. In a second his arm drew back and he slugged Steve across the face. His shield dropped from his hands at the force of the impact. It clattered to one side as Bucky moved, lightning fast. Before Steve could get his bearings, he was pinned against the cabinets, a metal hand clamped down hard on his neck.

 

Bucky watched his eyes bug out, watched him struggle for breath. He pressed harder and harder, gritting his teeth with the strain. He could choke him. All he had to do was keep squeezing, hold on until the squirming stopped. Hypoxia would cause the blood vessels in his eyes to burst, lips to turn blue. Hurt his lungs. Why did that feel so wrong? Steve gave a strangled gasp under his fingers, hands clutching ineffectually at steel fingers.

 

Steve wasn’t getting any air. If he didn’t get any air he’d die. He hadn’t stayed beside him through the sickness, pneumonia and the asthma just to have him die of suffocation, he had to let go!

 

Bucky rocketed back, shoving Steve away as he backpedalled, the heels of his palms pressed against his eyes. Steve crumpled to the floor, watching him with bleary eyes.

 

“Damn it!” Bucky howled over his memories. He swiped at his face, like if he tried hard enough he could pull out the images and grind them into dust with his bare hands. Steve coughed onto the damp floor, pushing himself onto his hands and knees.

 

“Bucky,” he started. “I want to help you.” Steve pushed himself up, stars bursting in front of his eyes. He got himself sat up, his legs splayed across the floor, back flat against a wall.

 

“I don’t want your help.”

 

Steve winced at the venom in the words.

 

“Why? I just want-”

 

“You want Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes back. Got a news flash for you, it’s not happening. I ain’t him.” Bucky scrubbed at his eyes again. “I don’t want to be him either.”

 

“Bucky-”

 

“I’m not him.”

 

“Bucky.” Steve repeated.

 

“Shut up! I’m not Bucky.” His hands wound into his long hair, pulling at the roots. “I’m not.”

 

“Bucky, please,”

 

“Shut up!” he yelled, heaving himself off the floor. He swung his metal hand into a cabinet, knocking it clear across the room. “You don’t know anything, you don’t know me! I am not your friend! Bucky’s gone, and he’s never coming back.” He turned to Steve, his face twisted into something manic and feral. “Don’t get up.” He spat. “Don’t move ‘til I’m gone, then stick around some more. Make sure you don’t indulge that stupid, sick impulse you’ve got to follow me around. If I see you again, I’ll kill you Rogers, no matter who you think you are to me.”

 

“You don’t mean that.” Steve’s neck was fine, Bucky hadn’t caused any hurt his super serum couldn’t heal, but he still felt like he couldn’t breathe.

 

“I do. Every single word.” Bucky stalked up to him, sank into a crouch and punched a hole in the wall next to Steve’s head. Plaster dust showered them both. “I don’t care about you. I don’t like you. In fact, I am pretty damned sure I hate you, and your stupid crusade. You’re just like Hydra, you keep trying to make me into someone I’m not.” He withdrew his arm, not breaking Steve’s desperate, despairing gaze. “Or maybe you’re not,” Bucky considered. “You’re worse. At least they got the message to leave me the hell alone.” Steve flinched back, horrified.

 

“I’m sorry,” He whispered. Bucky patted him on the cheek.

 

“No you’re not.” He stood up and walked to the door, his back straight and his head up. “Try and find me again and you will be.” He stepped through the door and left the words hanging in the air, each one ringing in Steve’s ears.

 

He watched the door for a few long minutes, shock settled so deep into his bones that he couldn’t have moved if he wanted to. The plaster dust drifted through the air. His shield dug into his leg, the air tasted foul, and Bucky hated him.

 

Sam fought outside, risking his life to save civilians, with no one to back him up. Steve got up from the floor, his legs unsteady as the room started spinning. Bucky hated him.

 

The wooden door fell off of its hinges. The noise snapped Steve back into the present, and he took a step towards it. His legs gave out before he’d gone two paces. The room looked hazy, the plaster dust should have settled by now and Bucky hated him.

 

 Everything was wrong. The room whirled in front of his eyes, something thick and metal had appeared where the wooden door was. What was that hissing noise? Why couldn’t he move? Bucky hated him.

 

 Gas. It had be gas. Some last defence against an interloper like him broke in and tried to make off with anything. Why had it only activated now?

 

 

Bucky hated him.

 

\--(x)--

 

 

Sam was glad to have his goggles as he whipped through the smoggy air. His blood sang in his veins as he swooped towards the gate. The scattered gunfire echoed through the clearing, but the Hydra soldiers were spread through the trees, very well covered. Sam banked around a group of three armed Hydra agents, opening fire as they raised their guns to shoot down the escaping prisoners. They went down and their two targets dashed into the tree line, screaming all the way.

 

Sam landed by a copse for cover. His heart hammered against his chest.

 

Here’s where it would get tricky. He had no idea who was who, who was armed and how many people there were out there.

 

He’d seen around twelve Hydra guards running this way as he’d worked his way into the base with Cap, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more around. The darkness and smoke would make it hard to tell the civilians from Hydra until he got close.

 

The sound of footsteps in the fallen leaves near his position tipped him off that he had company. He sunk into a crouch, his back flat against a wide tree, and peered into the darkness. The beam of a torch swept above his head and for a second Sam thanked the stupid design of the Hydra helmets for their lack of peripheral vision and dark lenses. The beam turned back and a pair of soldiers crept past.

 

Sam swung out from cover, taking each soldier down with a small burst of fire. Keeping low, he made his way deeper into the trees. He’d have to listen to try and find his targets in almost zero visibility. He couldn’t see the stars through the cloud and inky smoke. He’d probably be doubling back on himself at some points too. Losing his sense of direction on the ground was easy with no landmarks as points of reference. At least he wouldn’t be the only one lost in the dark.

 

There were screams on his left, and guttural sounding yells. Sam rushed towards it, guns held ready. Two more soldiers were backing a group of four against a line of trees, hands above their heads. Sam swallowed back revulsion. It was an execution. One of the group sobbed mutedly.

 

Sam ran in from the left, taking out the two soldiers with a spray of bullets. They crumpled into the dirt before they could raise their guns to retaliate. The four civilians looked around for their saviour, but Sam had already moved.

 

He was moving so fast, he missed the third soldier who’d been out of his sight. A hot, sharp pain dug into his leg as the soldier took the shot. Sam went down on the floor hard, hissing in pain. He rolled across the forest floor as the soldier opened fire again, the ground where he’d fallen peppered with bullets. Sam got behind another tree, checking his ammo. The soldier stopped shooting and shouted something into the night. Damn, he’d been made. There went the element of surprise.

 

The shouting cut off abruptly, the last sound being a loud yelp. Sam glanced out from his hiding place to see the four civilians all kicking the soldier. One of them spotted him and waved, shouting at him. Whatever language they were calling out in, he didn’t speak it, so he waved them off and kept moving.

 

The wound was in the flesh of his leg, and hadn’t hit anything vital, so he didn’t give it much thought. He’d take care of it after.

 

More screams, this time to the left and far deeper into the woods. Sam darted from tree to tree, keeping watch for any of the flashlight beams. One swept close to his position and he opened fire. The sound of a body hitting the ground was the only confirmation he’d hit someone.

 

The next four encounters were the same. Follow the voices, shoot the bad guys, save the non-combatants. His arms were getting scratched from falling back onto brambles and ducking into branches and his leg ached like hell, but he kept moving.

 

He heard more panicky shouting from his left and Sam sped towards it. There were three beams of light ahead and he raced towards them.

 

The shooting started before he got there. As soon as he had a clear shot at the gunmen he fired and they went down, tipping over like dominoes in a line. Sam skidded to a halt in the clearing, scooping up one of the fallen flashlights. He looked the ground and swore under his breath at the sight of two bony, bloody bodies.

 

Briefly, he wondered what the pair had done to get on the wrong side of Hydra. Were they political prisoners? Unlucky souls who’d gotten too close on a camping trip and disappeared? Leverage? The bodies were thin, malnourished. Whoever they used to be, there could be no mistaking what they had become. Test subjects.

 

Had the Winter Soldier set them free before he’d torched the place? He hoped so. It had been about a month since the disaster in DC, and whilst Steve remained steadfastly optimistic about his friend, Sam had his doubts. The act of leaving Steve on the bank of the Potomac had sent a clear symbol in his eyes, and the malicious violence that Steve’s apartment had been torn apart with cemented it. They were looking for a man who didn’t want to be found. It went against every instinct he had as a therapist to chase this man, but here he was anyway. But how could he say no to Steve? They operated on the same wavelength, and meeting someone as openly, honestly good as Steve made him feel alive in a way he hadn’t since Riley got shot out of the sky.

 

Maybe that was a part of why he was here too. Losing a friend the way he and Steve had stayed with you. If someone told him Riley was waiting for him, he couldn’t think of a place he wouldn’t go, a challenge he wouldn’t face. He’d be Orpheus in the underworld if it would have meant getting him back. So yeah, he got it. It was still a terrible idea.

 

Sam was torn out of his thoughts by the sound of uneven, thudding footsteps. It sounded like someone running a three legged race. He snuck towards the sound, furtive whispers coming through the trees. The stumbling continued a little further, then the sound of a body dropping to the floor. The whispers turn into tony, choked sobs.

 

Sam peered around his tree. In the moonlight, a woman hovered over a groaning man. His leg glistened against shredded trousers. Shot then, Sam surmised.

 

The snap of a dead branch got his attention. Someone was close. He turned back to the clearing, eyes darting over the treeline. Two beams of light cut through the night, nearly onto his position. He ducked down, readying his guns. His heart thudded against his chest as he moved so he had a clearer line of fire.

“Mikael!” The woman cried out. The soldiers’ attention snapped from the clearing to her voice. Their boots thudded past him and he couldn’t get a clear shot through the tree line. He couldn’t make it to them in time, not on foot. If he used his wings now, further from the smoke, he’d might as paint a bullseye on himself with all the noise he’d make.

 

What would Captain America do? With lives on the life, it was obvious.

 

He took off, jetting up and swooping down, using the flashlights to pinpoint the soldiers and fire before they could kill the woman and her companion. The whine of his engines gave away his position in seconds, and the soldiers turned, zeroed in on his position and fired. He ducked and weaved through the air, gritting his teeth as the bullets whipped by, too close for comfort.

 

He fired back, one of the soldiers going down. Three more beams joined the one soldier left. Reinforcements. He looped around the treetops for a moment to give himself some time to breath, then made another fly by, guns blazing. The soldiers shot  back, one bullet getting so close that it tore a hole in the sleeve of his shirt, leaving a stinging scratch on his arm.

 

One of the soldiers went down, the others ducked for cover as Sam dove towards them. He saw the woman hobbling away with her companions arm over her shoulders and smile thinly. Clever girl. The smile dropped when one of the lights turned from him to follow the pair.

 

“No you don’t!” He slalomed through the trees again, guns blazing. The soldier went down with a grunt and Sam turned back, rising up above the treeline.

 

He felt a jolt of surprise. He was nearly back at the base again. He wasn’t sure how long he’d spent running around the forest, but he’d been thought he’d gotten further away than that. Thinking about it, all the prisoners had no idea where they were, no idea where they were going and no way of knowing if they were doubling back on themselves in the dark. As he’d followed them, maybe it wasn’t so surprising.

 

The base was quiet. The previous hive of activity was now a heap of ashes and a few trucks where the last few Hydra personnel were loading things into a truck. There was some sort of ruckus going on, maybe they were arguing about something. Curiosity got the better of Sam, as he knew the ex-test subjects had escaped. He jetted towards the last truck, keeping low to try and mask his position.

 

He landed over the wall of the base and crept closer, using the piles of rubble as cover. A man in a lab coat and man with a large gun were shouting at each other, but Sam couldn’t understand the language. The white coated man gesticulated wildly; the man with the gun looked unimpressed. A group of four soldiers exited the ruins of the last building, huddled around something. Sam peered into the dark, trying to see what it was that had gotten them so riled up.

 

The man with the gun pointed it at the group, his voice hard. The man in the lab coat was pleading, it sounded like. Sam slunk forwards, keeping to the shadows, trying to get a better look. The man with the gun was getting angrier. What was th- Sam watched in amazement as the scientist looking man stopped looking pathetic, stood up straight and shot the big soldier in the face. Brushing red off the lab coat, he waved the group of soldiers forwards. They were struggling to carry whatever it was they had, and for a moment one of their grips slipped.

 

Something round, metal and familiar rolled towards him and Sam swallowed back panic. For a few seconds he got a clear glimpse of who they were loading into the truck.

 

Hydra had Steve.

 

He reacted in seconds. His wings flicked out, his feet left the ground and his guns were in hand before he had time to think. The man in the white coat jumped at the noise of the engines and started yelling. Two more Hydra soldiers jumped out of the back of the truck and started shooting at him. Sam went to return fire, but they were all standing too close to Steve. He didn’t want to shoot into the crowd when Steve was defenceless.

 

The scientist seemed to realise it the same moment Sam did and shouted the soldiers to load Steve into the truck. Sam fired at the man in the white coat, who ducked and vanished into the cab of the truck. Bullets whipped through the air and Sam soared upwards, moving out of their path.

 

He felt a jolt, and a sense of unbalance as something clipped him. Instinctively he flew away, but he was thrown backwards, pinwheeling through the air. They’d hit his wings! He’d only just gotten those fixed!

 

For sick moment he saw the world as a vertiginous spiral of dirt and sky, he was on the floor, splayed out like a rag doll. His head pounded and black spots danced at the edge of his vision. He tried to get up, but his vision swam, went black and he blinked himself back into life, sprawled on the floor again.

 

He could hear the sound of boots trudging their way over. Sam rolled a little, trying to catch a glimpse of who was coming. Three pairs of black combat boots appeared, stepping into his line of vision. They stopped a little way from his face, then one boot came closer, nudging at his cheek.

 

“Heh. Broken bird.” A heavily accented voice chuckled. Sam felt a hot rush of impotent anger. If he could just move, he could do something, anything, rather than lie still and wait for a bullet. He could vaguely make out the muzzle of a machinegun pointed in his direction. He closed his eyes.

 

The sound of bullets thudding into a body filled the night.

 

Sam cracked an eye open.

 

“Can you move?”

 

What the hell? The Winter Soldier crouched over him, the bodies of the three Hydra soldiers crumpled in a heap behind him. It’s so surreal that for a few seconds Sam thinks he’s hallucinating. Weird. He’d expected his life flashing in front of his eyes, not being rescued by an assassin.

 

“Hey!” Something freezing cold touched his cheek. “Can you hear me?”

 

“Sure,” Sam answered, trying to figure out which way is up, and what the hell he had forgotten that was important. Oh, that was it. “Oh damn, Steve. Hydra, they got Steve.”

 

“What?” Barnes leant back, frowning. “How?”

 

“No idea. I saw- damn, my head hurts.” Sam winced, memories and pain colliding into a confusing crash. He pushed himself up, sweeping the shattered remains of one of his wings aside. “I came back to the base after trying to save the prisoners, and saw them carry him out. Is that truck still there?”

 

“No, these guys were the last Hydra on site. There weren’t any vehicles last I saw.” Barnes stood up, folding his arms. “You said you were saving the guys I let out?”

 

“Yeah, Hydra went after them. Guess they didn’t want their secrets getting out or something. I got most of the soldiers.” Sam tried to get up, but he overbalanced, his injured leg sending him back to the floor.

 

“Not before a couple of them got you too.” Barnes commented. He looked Sam over for a second. “There’s a camp set up by the survivors, far enough away from here it won’t be found. I’ll take you there.”

 

“I’ll be fine. Gimme a second, I’ll be walking outta here. I’m not sure you heard the most important part of what I said. Hydra has Steve.”

 

“I heard you.” Barnes scanned the area and shook his head, “I can’t do anything about that right now. You I can help.” That was how Sam found himself being hoisted up like he weighed nothing, his arm around the shoulders of the erstwhile Winter Soldier, one warm, one biting cold. They trudged through the forest in silence. There wasn’t even the sound of birds or little creatures snuffling through the undergrowth.

 

They continued like that for ten minutes before Sam broke the silence.

 

“So why are you helping me?” he asked. Barnes didn’t stop walking, but he did seem to consider for a moment.

 

“Because, I don’t know who I am. I tried looking, tried remembering, but my mind’s fried. So I get to decide who I am. First time I’ve had that luxury in a long time.” Sam looked at him, his haggard face, lined with soot and sweat. Yeah, he could see the appeal of getting a choice after being used for seventy years.

 

“What have you decided?”

 

“I don’t know yet,” Barnes looked as surprised as Sam felt at the admission.

 

“Is there a but that goes with that, or are you gonna flip out and try to kill me at some point?” Sam said, a weak attempt at a joke. Adding to the long list of the night’s surprises, Barnes actually smirked.

 

“I will drop you where you stand and walk away.” His voice was deadpan, but something behind his eyes that sparked a little.

 

“Hey now, there’s no need for that. We’re all good people here.”

 

“Hardly.” Barnes snorted.

 

“It’s what you’ve decided to be, isn’t? You don’t care about being anyone in particular, not a perfect soldier, just a good man. That’s why you’re carrying me.” Barnes looked thoughtful at that.

 

“I don’t know. Maybe, I guess. When you say it like that, it sounds right.”

 

“If that’s what you want, you should give it your best shot.”

 

“I am a good shot,” Barnes agreed blandly.

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“Yeah. I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone paying attention to this, it's a blast to write. Again, would love any feedback. 
> 
> Cheers guys!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this thrilling chapter, a lot of people argue over rescuing Steve, whilst simultaneously not doing all that much to rescue him. What is the dastardly HYDRA doing to our brave hero? Find out soon true believers!

Natasha sat in the lobby of Stark Tower, eyes fixed on the door. As it stood, there were three possible candidates due to arrive, with one thing in common. They would all be pissed as hell. Probably.

 

“Yo-Saff-Bridge, why are there cops sat outside my nice shiny building?” Tony Stark stormed through the double doors with a face like thunder.

 

“Because I used it to hack into foreign military satellites.” She said simply. Tony looked at her, draped over a plush armchair, grabbed his phone, tapped at it a bit and seemed to deflate.

 

“JARVIS, did you help her?” He glared around the room.

 

“Yes sir.” Came the disembodied reply.

 

“And why, pray tell, did you help our not so resident super spy do that?”

 

“Agent Romanoff was attempting to help Captain Rogers and Sam Wilson infiltrate a Hydra compound and track a splinter cell. Considering the events of last month, I thought it prudent to render her every possible assistance.”

 

“I think JARVIS took the idea of someone trying to blow you up more personally than you did.” Hawkeye announced.

 

Tony did not, no matter what certain spies may say, jump when Barton appeared beside him. Natasha smiled one of her not quite there smiles. Tony straightened his tie and jacket, not that they needed straightening, because he hadn’t jumped.

 

“I happen to take people trying to blow me up very well!” He protested. Clint snorted and clapped him on the shoulder.

 

“If by well you mean that you annoy the people trying until they succeed and blow them up in revenge; then hey, you’re doing a great,” With that he strolled past him like he owned the place, which he didn’t, joining Natasha in lounging artfully all over Tony’s nice furniture.

 

“That’s not the issue, and anyway I do not do that.”

 

“Three times Tony, that’s just off the top of my head.” Clint held up three fingers to count them. Tony cut him off.

 

“The issue is – There are a lot of issues. Firstly, where’s - No, wait, _first_ where the hell have you even been?” Tony glared at Clint. “Your whole spy game goes to hell and you what, go for a months’ vacation in Hawaii?” Tony didn’t miss the slight stiffening in Barton’s posture. Natasha’s eyes slid over to him too, which Tony filed away for blackmail later. He knew she was lying about being omniscient!

 

“Tahiti, actually.” Clint said, far too casually for either of them to be fooled.

 

“Tahiti.” Tony repeated.

 

“Tahiti?” Natasha raised an eyebrow.

 

“Tahiti.” Clint confirmed, tilting his chin up.

 

“Tahiti.” Tony said it again, rolling the word around his mouth. “Ta-hi-ti.” He shuddered. “Nope, too much, words lost all meaning now. Tahiti. Tahiiiiti. What does that even mean, Tahiti? JARVIS, what’s-”

 

“NYPD, open up!” Came a loud, curt shout from the entrance. Several police officers stood at the door, guns raised like bad extras from a Captain America short, poised to storm a HYDRA base. There were more outside by the cars, ready to duck for cover.

 

“Oh yeah, the cops,” Tony grumbled. “JARVIS, lock down the building.”

 

“Building secure Sir.” Came the ready reply. “Will you be leaving via the roof Sir?”

 

“Sure, why not. Send for my finest helicopter.” Tony started towards the elevator, stopped short and turned back around. “Wait a sec, I’m not done with you two. We’ve covered Tahiti-”

 

“We really haven’t.” Clint sighed.

 

“And I know why there are cops outside. Aren’t we one short? Where’s the Capiscle? I thought he’d be outside already, trying to spread peace and unity to America’s finest out there.” Tony waved in the direction of the cops, who were trying to take down one of the towers glass entrance doors with a battering ram and failing miserably.

 

“I lost contact with Steve and Sam approximately eighteen hours ago.” Natasha sat up, her spine ramrod straight. “The last communication stated that The Falcon was grounded, injured and stranded on foreign soil in the company of the assassin formerly known as the Winter Soldier. He said Steve had been taken by HYDRA, loaded into a truck, which they lost track of. I tried to track the vehicle, but there was too much cover and by that point the only satellite I could use was so old that the resolution made it impossible to trace, given the light conditions.”

 

“Huh. That’s weird, that sounded a lot like a debrief. Tell me, do I look like I’m being possessed by the ghost of Nick Fury?” Tony glanced down at himself. “No? No. That means I don’t want to know. Now if you don’t mind, I need to go convince Rhodey I’ve had a security breach so he’ll get those jokers away from my door before they break something.” Tony turned on his heel and started towards the elevator again. “JARVIS, what’s the eta on that helicopter?”

 

“So, you don’t care about Hydra getting their hands on Steve?” Clint jumped to his feet in a second and next to Tony in two. “I know you ragged on him for being a ‘SHIELD stooge’ if I remember you right, but come on.” Clint frowned; worry carving deep lines in his skin.

 

“No, I care, sure I care. Don’t think I don’t care! I care a lot. You know what I can do that’s better than caring though, and, frankly, according to Pepper, is a big step for me.” He glanced pointedly at Natasha and Clint. “I can put my trust you. Not with anything too important, but rescuing our erstwhile leader.” He clapped a hand over his heart, eyes shining with faux patriotism. “I trust you two to handle it. Brilliantly, to perfection, you are rescuing aficionados, both of you. I mean that.”

 

“You’re an asshole.” Clint ground out. Tony smiled blithely.

 

“I’m delightful.”

 

“You’re an asshole.” Natasha confirmed. Tony huffed, tapping the door button.

 

“And you guys are missing the big picture.” He rolled his shoulders, looking back at them again. “You blew up SHIELD a month ago, that’s HYDRA done for, apart from a few outliers that’ll pop up every now and then and be annoying. Nothing the appropriate authorities can’t deal with. There’s no need for the whole Avengers reunion thing you two seem to be trying to swing, or whatever. We’re not getting the band back together, it’s not happening. You two want to go spring Cap from the jaws of whatever trap he’s gotten himself into, great. But you don’t need me to do it, and I’ve got better things to do than sit here and-”

 

“Like hell we don’t need you.” Clint’s hands were clenched into fists, the knuckles fading from red to white. “Natasha and are good at what we do. I’d say we’re probably the best, but running ops alone when you haven’t got a clue what you’re up against isn’t just dumb, it’s suicidal. You think blowing three helicarriers and getting rid of Pierce has put HYDRA down for good? Get your head out of your ass, HYDRA survived the Red Skull, it’ll survive this. I don’t believe for second they’re gone for good.” Clint sighed and the tautness leaked from his frame. “As it stands we have next to no intel on how many other agents there are planted worldwide, or in what organisations. There’s definitely still some imbedded in SHIELD, so we can’t go to them for back up. We have no intel on enemy outposts, anywhere they might’ve taken Steve. We’re fighting blind with no resources, no back up, and apparently no damn sense, because we came here thinking you’d help us.”

 

“It’s nice, having friends that’ll be there to help you when you get in a jam.” Tony snapped. “I don’t remember any of the Avengers playing storm the castle when AIM had me, and Pepper, and the President. I guess we weren’t as much of a priority as Captain America.”

 

“Well, maybe we shouldn’t have had to hear about it on the news. You have our numbers Tony. You didn’t call.” Clint retorted. “But I get it. You’re pissed, fine. Be pissed. But don’t be petty.”

 

The elevator doors behind Tony opened. Tony hitched a little, halfway there to turning around and walking away. Natasha got to her feet with all the dainty grace of the dancer she wasn’t and stepped beside Clint.

 

“They have Steve.” She said simply, letting the words hang there for a moment. ”I know you read the file on the Winter Soldier, you’ve read my file. You know what HYDRA are capable of. They take good people and they take them apart until there’s nothing left. If we don’t go after Steve with every resource at our disposal, there is a very high chance there’ll be nothing left to find, or worse. There could be nothing left to salvage from the ruins of the man who used to be Captain America.”

 

Tony swallowed. Natasha’s gaze was unwavering. Clint tried again.

 

“You want big picture? Those helicarriers targeted you, they targeted Pepper, they targeted Rhodes, Bruce. You let this lie and they try again? Maybe succeed because the last person that got in their way is rotting in a ditch somewhere in Ukraine? Then what? When does it get personal enough for you to give a shit?”

 

“Alright, alright, I get it. I got it after that last speech. How about everyone stops making speeches and just follows me upstairs. We’ve got a lot to do, other avengers to try and contact and a lot of police officers not to do it in front of.” Natasha glanced back. The cops were taking to the glass doors with welding torches, again without much success.

 

“After you.” She motioned to the two men. The elevator doors closed behind all three of them, just as Tony muttered;

 

“Pepper’s going to kill me.”

 

\--(X)--

 

“I got a message out, just before the battery died.” Sam said, his breath misting out into the cold night air.

 

The fire crackled in front of him, snapping embers into the chill. Behind him, the Winter Soldier stood facing out, keeping watch over the tree line.

 

They were miles from the HYDRA base now, they’d been moving for two days. Most of the prisoners who Barnes had freed had gone their own way, moving in little groups, vanishing into the night with a quiet shuffle and a whisper of thanks before they left. A few lingered, mainly the injured, able to keep pace with Sam’s limping gait.

 

“You get anything back?” Barnes didn’t turn from his watch. He looked equal part statue and sentinel, which Sam found creepy as hell.

 

“Nothing. They got the message though, I’m sure of that.”

 

“Yeah?” Barnes voice was flat, as always. Sam tried a few jokes on him earlier, but his range seemed to run from deadpan to robotic. The small smile he’d coaxed when they’d first met seemed a distant memory.

 

“Natasha follows me on twitter. I tagged her. Looks like a link to a cupcake recipe to anyone else.”

 

“Whatever you say.” JARVIS sounded more human than this guy. Sam stretched is leg out with a wince and hiss. The heat from the fire helped it, but it was still stiff and sore. The silence hung heavily over the clearing, drowning out the sound of bird’s wings and small creatures shuffling in fallen leaves. Somewhere overhead, a plane droned by, lights blinking in the far away sky.

 

“You know, we never did discuss the plan.” Sam said finally. Barnes twitched.

 

“And what are we meant to be planning.” He asked.

 

“You know, operation ‘Rescue Steve from the Jaws of Death’?” Sam twisted around to look at the Soldier. His black leather jacket hid any movement.

 

“You come up with that by yourself?”

 

“Sure did. You know, back in the military, they never did let me name the ops. Never figured why.”

 

“I wonder.” Barnes returned.

 

“So?” Sam shifted again, so he didn’t have to turn so much to see Barnes.

 

“So nothing.”

 

“Nothing? That’s all you’ve got?” Sam said, affronted. Barnes shifted his weight a little.

 

“Yup.” His hands gripped the stock of his rifle. “That’s me. I’m the nothing man.” Sam sighed, getting gingerly to his feet. Barnes jerked around at the noise, finally turning around. He took in Sam, leaning heavily to one side, pain evident in tense set of his muscles. Barnes face took on a pinched look as he crossed the three steps between them and shifted Sam’s weight onto his metal shoulder. “Don’t be an idiot, sit back down. Your muscle’s torn up enough as it is, don’t aggravate it.”

 

“Look, I didn’t mean it how it came out.” Sam said, slipping back down to the ground. Barnes nodded distractedly, his eyes flitting back to the still treeline. They’d not been followed as far as either of them could tell, but they didn’t want to take chances. “Steve’s my friend and I’m not exactly moving heaven and earth to help him out right now.”

 

“You’ve done what you can. You said you got a message out? Then someone’s gonna go get him and you can all play soldier again soon.” Barnes dropped into a crouch next to Sam, absently checking the bandage on his leg.

 

“And you? What’re you going to do?” Barnes didn’t look at him, even though there was nothing wrong with the bandage they’d knocked up.

 

“Who knows. Go somewhere, try and figure out who I am.” He murmured, running a hand over his face.

 

“But you’re not going looking for Steve? He knows exactly who you were, knew you better than anyone.” Sam watched Barnes face, the set of his jaw as his face fell into a grimace at the thought.

 

“I’m trying to figure out who I am now. Rogers knows about some guy he grew up with in the forties. We can’t help each other because we’re looking for two different guys.” Barnes raised his cybernetic arm, flexing the fingers. They seemed to glow orange in the firelight.

 

“They can be, if that’s what you want.” Sam said carefully. Barnes snorted.

 

“I know what you’re doing, when you say it like that. They had quacks in with the army too-” Barnes hand snapped to his head, his eyes screwed tight. “Damn it!”

 

Sam leaned towards him.

 

“Hey. Hey, you okay?” He asked. Barnes winced, grinding a palm over his eye socket.

 

“Headache.” He spat, teeth gritted. Sam nodded, not believing a word.

 

“Okay. If I had Tylenol to offer, I would but, you know. Being stuck in the woods in Eastern Europe, not exactly a Walgreens nearby.”

 

“Sure,” Barnes didn’t seem to be listening to him, but Sam kept talking. Barnes looked a little less tense the longer he went on.

 

“You know, I’ve been stuck in the middle of nowhere before. This one time, I was on a roadtrip with a friend of mine. His name was Riley, he was my wingman – But we decided were going to drive across to Yosemite Park and go climb a rock or two. Something he’d always wanted to do, saw it in a movie once and he wouldn’t shut up about it. So we’re making good time, when three hours outside Rawlins, Wyoming, the minivan rusts right out from under our feet, I mean it. We left the engine further up the road. So I start ragging on Riley about how I wanted to go hiking instead of climbing and he gets this look on his face. He starts laughing and I’m getting pissed, we’ve been driving for hours and it’s only just starting to get cooler for the evening. He looked right at me and said, ‘here’s your damned hike, dumbass.’ I cracked up. Told him he had a smart mouth. He said I was buying the first round of beers when we got into town. We argued about it the whole walk back.”

 

Barnes stared into the fire as Sam talked, his metal hand clenching and unclenching. His eyes seemed a little less haunted as he listened.

 

“Is he waiting for you to get back?” He asked. Sam shook his head.

 

“Riley was KIA a couple of years ago.” He said. Barnes turned from the fire for a moment, looking Sam over. Sam wasn’t sure what he wanted to see, or if he found it. His eyes were unreadable as he turned back.

 

“Sorry.”

 

“It’s okay.”

 

“You’d go after him wouldn’t you, if you were me, or if he were Riley?” His voice was soft, and Sam wondered if the flashbacks, or whatever they were, cracked whatever shell Barnes had over his emotions. Barnes might not even know it was happening. There weren’t words he could think of for how _sad_ that was.

 

“Yeah, I would.” Sam answered. The words drifted into the night the same as his breath on the air. “And I get why you don’t know if you want to. But saving someone doesn’t mean you’re bound to them. You can still be you if you go rescue Steve Rogers. You might even like yourself better if you do.”

 

“But if I save him, he’s never going to stop coming for me.” Barnes drew his legs up to his chest, leaning his chin on his knees. “First time in my life I feel like I’ve got to freedom to choose my own path, and Steve’s there, everywhere I turn. I can’t leave here, I got to save Steve. If I save him, I can’t leave; Steve’s going to follow me. Can’t be a new person, Steve wants the old one back.”

 

“It doesn’t have to be one or the other.” Sam offered. “You can do both. Step one, get Steve away from HYDRA, step two, you sit him down and you tell him this. Tell him what you want, tell him what you don’t want, tell him if he ever respected you as a friend, he’ll let you do what you want. Steve is a good man. You’ll hurt him, sure, but he’ll deal with it. He’ll probably even wait for you, promise to be there for you if you ever need him, but that doesn’t mean you have to take him up on it.”

 

“You make it sound simple.”  Barnes said wistfully.

 

“I’m lazy. You can always trust a lazy person to get things done, quick and simple.”

 

“You’re a liar.” Barnes returned.

 

“Caught me.” Sam huffed out a laugh. “I mean it though.”

 

Barnes was quiet for a few long minutes. Sam watched him out the corner of his eye. He was doing his best statue impression again, but after a while he seemed to come to a decision.

 

“I’ll get Steve out. There’s a town not far from here, we’ll contact your friends from there. We’ll figure out an extraction plan for you, you can get that leg seen to, they find where Steve is and I’ll do what I do best.” Barnes jaw was set, his eyebrows drawn into a thick dark line, shadowing his eyes.

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Thank me when it’s done. You have to hold up your end of the bargain and keep Steve off my back.”

 

“Great, give me the hard job.” Sam said, and for a moment, he could have sworn he saw Barnes start to smile again. As quick as it appeared, it was gone, but Sam found himself comforted. He had no idea who the man sat next to him was, but if he wanted to be a good person, he was well on his way there already.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve woke up to the rank smell of standing water and damp. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. If he wasn’t sure he couldn’t get drunk, he’d have been convinced he was hungover.

When was the last time that’d happened? Steve closed his eyes and for one brief, shining moment, he could imagine he was back in 1941, laid up on his old mattress, the one that was more springs than material, trying to remember the previous night whilst Bucky yammered in the background, his thick Brooklyn drawl as grounding as the rough sheets that he had curled up in his fist. Outside that little bubble of comfort, the world shifted and twisted. His gut churned like he’d just gotten off a waltzer.

The feeling lasted until a door banged open above his head, snapping him back into the present. 1941 vanished back into the distant past and Steve tried to look around, to catch a glimpse of anything that wasn’t the damp brown ceiling. The room tilted sickeningly as he moved. Steve squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head a little, but the sensation remained.

“Don’t get up.” His eyes snapped open again. “I had heard you were a man who upheld tradition and propriety, and I am superior, but in this instance, your imprudence is permissible.” A tall, thin man stepped into his sight. He had a military looking bearing, wore a dark tailored suit and one of his eyes was obscured by a monocle, flickering yellow as it caught the low light.

“Who are you?” Steve glared at him, trying to move his arms. He wasn’t restrained, but he couldn’t move. His muscles could barely twitch beneath his skin.

“I think you’ll find our paralysis agent a little harder to shrug off than that, Captain.” The man said smugly. “As for who I am, you will find out soon enough. Right now it’s not important.”

“Yeah, you don’t look all that important.” Steve retorted. What little humour there was dropped from the man’s face. 

“I am the commander of this base.” The man corrected, his voice clipped and low. “I am the man who has profited most from the demise of Alexander Pierce. I am the man you will soon obey without question.” The man stalked closer, stopping at his bedside and leaning over. “You may call me whatever dull derogatory term comes to your tiny little mind, for now. But know this; no matter what you say or do, you will end up calling me one thing, and one thing only - Master.” 

“Not going to happen.” Steve said, eyes fierce. The man straightened, his mouth twisting into a smile that looked more like a grimace.

“Baron Von Strucker, the equipment is ready.” A young sounding man declared, somewhere outside of Steve’s eyeline. Von Strucker was right about one thing, whatever they’d dosed him up with was strong. He couldn’t even move his head.

“Move the good Captain into the wheelchair. I think it would be useful to give him the grand tour, before we begin.” Something dark glinted in Von Strucker’s eyes and Steve swallowed reflexively. “I wish him to see just how futile his petty attempt at resistance is.”

“Yes Sir!” 

Steve’s line of vision tilted violently. He could feel hands on his arms and back, but it was a fleeting sensation, quickly replaced by numbness and nausea again. The room turned, or rather, the wheelchair did, and Steve went with it. The corridor outside smelt worse than the room had, dank and musty. Whatever facility they were in, Steve surmised, it hadn’t been used for a long time.

Von Strucker walked with them. Apparently this was to be a personal tour. Steve couldn’t do much but look straight ahead as the corridors stretched out before them like a maze. He kept track of the route they took, left turn, left turn, small step, door, double door, right turn; elevator ride down two floors, maybe three. Three doors, four turns and two unforgiving steps later, they arrived at a door with a keypad. Von Strucker stepped up and entered a code that Steve didn’t see. 

The door hissed open, and Steve was pushed in. Another corridor stretched out in front of them, but this one wasn’t bare, like the others. It was lined with doors, some solid, others made of metal bars. They started to move down the corridor with Von Strucker leading the way.

“Hydra has not gone unopposed, Captain, in the years you were asleep. Every so often a person of great intellect, or great misfortune, would happen upon the secrets we hide in plain sight.” The first door went by. The barred cell was empty, save for the large, red smear on the wall. “These people, well, you can only imagine the kind of things they thought they could do with the information they found. A few wanted to join us, a few even tried to blackmail us, but most people tried to escape.”

Another cell door went by. It was empty again, a rotten chair collapsed in one corner. The back wall was covered in words, each one scrawled scrappily in the rusty brown colour of dried blood. They went past it before he could make any of it out.

“They tried to run and hide, but they were sloppy. Panicking people always are.”

“Your place in Kiev sure seemed organised at the end.” Steve bit out. Von Strucker didn’t skip a beat.

“Kiev was a mistake, but not a harsh one. For all the damage our former asset cost us, he did galvanise our efforts in placing our research materials in one location.” The next cell slid by, empty again bar the blood stained floor. Steve began to sense a pattern. “This facility once housed political prisoners, exiled by the Soviet regime. It was abandoned in 1992, whereupon it was seized by our agents. It was here that phase two of our Winter Soldier project was first trialled.”

“Phase two?” Steve frowned. “But you already had Bucky, why would you need to-”

“Do you know what Hydra is, Captain, what it represents?” Von Strucker interrupted. Steve glared at the back of his head.

“I know exactly what it is, and I don’t care what you think it represents.” Von Strucker ignored him again. Another cell drifted past, and Steve started at the sight of a man sat on the floor rocking, staring out of the barred door. He didn’t seem to notice the little group passing by.

“Hydra is order from chaos, peace from war, wisdom from the minds of the greatest, shared only with the mighty few. It is the only way for humanity to exist in a state of harmony with itself. You give the people freedom and they give you petty squabbles about rights and religion. Pathetic! You gave your life so that other may never know war, and what do you wake up to? War still rages, no lessons were learned and the past is doomed to repeat itself. Hydra could stop it all, if we remade the world in our image. The worthy would live in peace and those with power would wield it in defence of honour and justice. Is this not a world you would like to see? Are these not the ideals you strive for?”

“Nope. Not even close.” Von Strucker stopped at that.

“I thought that might be your answer. You are not easily persuaded Captain. I’m glad.” Von Strucker started walking again and the endless parade of doors continued. Empty, occupied, occupied, empty, occupied. “It is a promising. It helps us to have a firm foundation with which to begin.” They came to a halt by a solid metal door. The guard who’d been pushing Steve stepped forward with a key and the door swung open with a creak like a scream. Steve half expected the hinges to collapse any second.

He was pushed into the room.

“Cut off one head, two more shall take its place, cut off one head, two more shall take its place, cut off one head…”

“This is subject 53. A skilled inventor once, but a drunk. We picked him up in Michigan, using an agent disguised as a priest. The dear fellow wanted to get well so he could create again. We gave him the chance to go to a place with all the resources he could want, and no temptations.”

The prisoner was filthy. His hair hung around his shoulders, twisted into thick tendrils. His eyes bulged and his teeth clacked as they repeated their steady rhythm. It was only when the man finally noticed he had company and twisted towards them that Steve choked back a horrified gasp.

One hand and forearm were completely metal. The fingers grasped at the floor, cutting tracks in the dust. His other arm ended in a stump. The palm of the man’s hand was there, but his fingers were ragged, blunt stumps. 

“Subject 53 did not appreciate our hospitality. He tried to kill himself twice, but we would not allow it. So, the next time that he was alone, he bit off his own fingers. Can you imagine it Captain, it must have been so very painful. We cut off the hand and replaced it, as you can see. We moved him into mental testing, as he showed such remarkable resistance to pain. We began the trials before we recovered the component, and his mind was destroyed. We did not waste our efforts on him when he ruined his other hand.”

“Hail Hydra!” Subject 53 said, his bulging eyes wide, his pupils destroyed. “Hail Hydra, hail Hydra!”

He was still shouting when Steve’s chair was wheeled away and the door was sealed again. The next door was barred again, and a dirty looking woman sat inside. She was perched on the edge of a low metal framed bed, completely still. Her gaze was fixed firmly on the far wall. 

“This is subject 64. She uncovered an operation of ours in Kosovo. She tried to hide from us, promised she’d never tell a soul about what she had learned, but Hydra is thorough Captain. There is no place to hide from us. Our eyes are everywhere. Despite her initial cowardice, she held up remarkably well under the program. It was only when we recovered the component that we abandoned her conditioning. Sadly the component is incompatible with our previous methods.” 

They started moving again. Von Strucker walked in front of them again, a little spring in his step.

“I don’t care what you do to me. I will never help you.” Steve said. The rank smell was so thick he could practically taste it. Would it be worse to live in a place like this, or die in it? He’d probably find out.

“You’re right. I could show you failure after failure, but you aren’t a man to be scared into submission. Perhaps what you should be afraid of are our successes. And we have had success Captain.” The corridor turned, and a new steel door loomed at the end of it. “Tel me, how well did you know Agent Jasper Sitwell?”

“Sitwell?” Steve’s eyes widened. “I knew of him. Then I found out he was Hydra.”

“Yes, he was, wasn’t he? Amazing how he managed to fool so many people about his loyalties. He was even one of Agent Coulson’s close friends, I believe. Did you know Agent Sitwell disappeared for a month on a mission last year? He was supervising junior field agents on a low risk operation in Bogota, when his location was compromised and he was captured by a local militia. They held him for ransom for a month, before he managed to escape and rendezvous with another agent at a SHIELD safe house. Wonderful little story, isn’t it?”

“It was Hydra, you picked him up.” Steve felt a hot flush of anger. It balled up inside and at near his sternum in an angry knot. If he could have moved his arms, he’d have torn Von Strucker apart. 

“Of course. He put up such a fight. You’d have been proud. He was everything you’d have admired. That was the reason why he was chosen.” They stopped in front of the new door as Von Strucker entered another code. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges.

“So you brain washed him. Why didn’t the programming degrade like before? You weren’t keeping Sitwell on ice.” Steve was pushed into the room and finally got a good look at the Hydra equipment, and its new component. Oh, that’d do it. There, sat on a pedestal, hooked up to a hundred different monitors and trackers, was Loki’s sceptre. He’d seen the photos of Hawkeye under its influence, his eyes icy as he slaughtered innocent people for an alien tyrant. Comprehension hit him like a fist and he sucked in a harsh breath. Torture, brainwashing, he could probably handle that, but this? What possible defence was there against this?

“Do you recognise it Captain? You and Miss Romanoff handed it into SHIELD custody personally, did you not? I should thank for placing it into our hands. It has proved to be the key to solving the degradation problem.” Von Strucker gazed at the sceptre almost tenderly. “It carries a fragment of the power of the Tesseract, the power of the Gods. Unlike our previous machinery, which supressed and overwrote memories, this has the power to remove and reconstruct them into whatever we like. For someone like you? We would take you apart, piece by piece. You are a loyal man, so we would make you loyal to us. You are a principled man, so we would adjust your ideals until they reflect our interests. The rest of you? Your personality, memories of friends, family, lovers – we have no use for that.”

Steve’s heart pounded in his chest. He needed to be out of here now. He couldn’t go in the machine. Hydra couldn’t use him as a weapon, he’d be too effective. He tried to think back, figure out if there was a way to tell how long he’ been kept unconscious – could Natasha or Sam be coming for him? Had there been enough time to plan a rescue mission? 

Sam – wait, had he even made it out of there? The last he’d seen of him, he’d been flying blind into a fire fight with no back up. All for what? So Steve could go chasing after the ghost of man despised him? Bucky had left him there. Bucky hated him. He should have helped Sam. He shouldn’t have left him alone. What if he was dead? No, Sam was better than that. Sam wouldn’t go down so easy. But what if he had?

Steve took a deep breath and tried to move again. He focused on something subtle, a fingertip, maybe a toe. He had to move. 

“Has the specimen been prepared?” A short man in a lab coat strode into Steve’s line of vision. Steve’s big toe moved.

“The specimen is ready.” The young soldier behind Steve piped up. The world tilted crazily again as Steve felt himself being manhandled into a creaky leather chair. He could twitch his thumb. Von Strucker looked down at him.

“I am curious to see the results of this little test. There is no one else like you in the world, and your serum could make the process volatile. I don’t know what will happen to your brain should you resist.”

“Looks like we’ll find out.” Steve spat. Von Strucker smiled. Somewhere behind him, someone was attaching electrodes to his head.

“Excellent. I don’t know which result I’d prefer. You would be a truly valuable asset to us Captain, but should you prove unsuitable, I would enjoy killing you. I imagine your autopsy report would be fascinating.”

Steve just glared at him. He had nothing else to say. Unless someone came through the door before the procedure started, granting him some stay of execution, this was it. His brain was probably getting fried here.

He wasn’t the kind of man to beg, or plead, but his mind was racing. Sam, Natasha, anyone. He’d even take Stark walking through the door, annoying and loud, but always able to keep him grounded in this century. His fingertips curled around the edge of the armrest. It wasn’t enough.

“Don’t keep us waiting Doctor,” Von Strucker said. His monocle caught the light, flaring yellow and blank. Steve heard a switch being thrown, an electrical sounding hum.

“Mr Trevor, make sure you keep abreast of his brainwaves. I want the specimen monitored at all times.”

“Yes sir.”

Natasha, Clint, Tony, help me, someone please…

“The Sceptre has activated. Beginning initial overload.”

Bucky…


	5. Chapter 5

For Sam, it’d been a _long_ six days. Six days of driving on rough roads, trying to ignore the pain as each bump jolted his bad leg as he lay stretched out in the back of a stolen station wagon. Six days since they’d made contact with Natasha, hashed out their plans and got the information on the three targets – three possible places where Hydra could be holding Steve.

 

Barnes had let him do most of the talking on the phone. He’d listened to the conversation, added a few things he could remember about Hydra defences, but he’d mainly hovered in the background. He’d almost walked out when Stark started rambling into the phone.

_…_

_“Is he there? Was that him talking? I wish this was a video call; I want to see what all the fuss is about. Does he really still look the same? I mean, I know Capsicle does, but it goes with the territory. Hey, hey you, Bucky Barnes, did you really wear a domino mask? It’s just I’ve got this old comic and -”_

_“Stark, he’s gone.” Sam interrupted, even though Barnes hadn’t left, though he did look like he’d swallowed a lemon. “Now, you were saying about Siberia?”_

_…_

The plan went like this. There were five of them and three Hydra bases, spread across three countries. With Steve having been in Hydra’s clutches for a week, it was imperative they get in and out as fast as possible; they were hitting all three locations at once.  Sam would have to sit out of the action with his injuries. It’d been agreed either Barton or Romanoff would accompany Tony, who’d liberated some new armour for the endeavour, to one of the bases, leaving Barnes and whoever won the coin toss to sneak into the others. Whoever found Steve would report back, the team would gather, avenging would happen and they’d all ride off happily into the sunset. Barnes would take the one in Belarus, being the closest, one party would go to Moldova and the other would take the site in Poland.

 

Of course the plan was doomed from the start.

 

\--(x)--

 

Barnes crept through an old sewer tunnel, his earpiece sizzling with static in his ear. As much as Stark had bragged to Wilson about the brilliant of his machinery, keeping five people in constant contact when they were in three different countries and sometimes underground seemed to be proving impossible.

 

Some bright and brilliant future this turned out to be.

 

His flashlight caught a glimpse of something slimy and dripping hanging from the ceiling. He ducked, wrinkling his nose. It wasn’t like he’d been expecting roses, but the fetid stink of years of old refuse made his eyes water.

 

His boots were a write off, like almost everything else he wore. Leather might wash easily, but some smells were hard to shift. He’d been down here long enough the stink had saturated everything. He hoped his arm would be alright after this. Knowing his luck he’d have to sit outside and air it out or something. Wait, he had luck now? He squeezed his eyes shut against the now familiar strain of a memory trying to slip through. No time to deal with that.

 

A metal grating appeared in front of him as he rounded a corner. He looked over it, the old bolts holding it in place, nudging it with a metal finger experimentally. It shifted, the rust making a shrill whine against the pressure. It’d do. He grabbed hold of it with both hands and pulled.

 

The bolts tore out of the tunnel walls with a shrieking scrape. He tossed it aside and dusted his gloved hands down on his trousers. The leather across his palms split, a little bead of blood forming across his flesh hand. He ignored it and continued on. From the information he’d gotten from Romanoff, the sewer tunnel ran directly under an asylum with previous links to Hydra in the 40’s, went off the grid in the 60’s and was assumed to have been taken over by the Soviets as a storage facility.

 

Storage could mean a lot of things.

 

He passed four more outlets, holding his breath as the smell intensified. Somewhere around here there should be a manhole – there! A set of ladder rungs were screwed into the wall, ending in a heavy looking manhole cover. Barnes settled the flashlight between his teeth, hissing as he took a breath. The smell was so thick on the air he could taste it. He climbed the ladder as quickly as he could, pushed up the manhole cover an inch and surveyed the area. He’d come out in a damp looking room with a broken generator dominating one corner. He waited a moment, but he couldn’t see anyone, or hear any footsteps. Silent as a wraith, he slipped out of the manhole, replaced the cover and checked room, sucking in clean air. It was what it looked like, an empty room. He didn’t know if he was disappointed on not.

 

“This is the Soldier, Falcon, do you copy?” He murmured into his radio. It crackled in his ear for a moment before another voice appeared on the line.

 

“This is Falcon, I read you. What’s your status?”

 

“I’m in. Starting to check out the rest of the building now. Any word from the others?” The room had two doors ways. One led into a cupboard with a mop head and bucket strewn across the floor. The other led to a corridor. He did a quick visual check for cameras. Nothing.

 

“Widow’s in with no problems. Looks like hers is a bust. Abandoned for a few months, whole place is stripped. Iron Man and Hawkeye have met some resistance. Nothing they can’t handle.”

 

“Copy that.” The corridor loomed large with a low curved roof. Damp stains ran down the sides of the tile walls. “Huh.” Barnes let out a soft snort.

 

“Found something?” Sam asked. Barnes smirked a little.

 

“Not yet. It won’t take me long though.” Barnes examined the wall closely. “They’ve put up a map. It looks like its colour coded by floor.”

 

“Can you read it?”

 

“Of course. It’s printed in three languages.” 

 

“You’re kidding.” Sam laughed. Barnes felt his face slip into a wry grin.

 

“Nope. Just like Marseille.” Barnes breath caught in his throat. Marseille? Where had that come from? He grit his teeth and fought down a whimper as images flashed in front of his eyes, another map, another building, a group of men, their elated faces flashing in the firelight of the factory they’d blown to pieces.

 

“You remember?” Sam sounded too far away. Barnes fought his way back to the present, slogging through his memories until he was back in the room. He found himself with his hands flat against the wall, forehead pressed against the cold surface. “Soldier? Hey, you hear me? Do you copy?”

 

“I’m here,” he choked out. “I can’t - don’t remember a thing.” Hopefully the lie didn’t sound as hollow as it felt.

 

“You’re okay Soldier. Take it easy. Chances are he’s not at your location. Hawkeye and Iron Man are facing some serious resistance in my other ear. I had to turn the volume down.”

 

“I’m fine,” Barnes bit out, shoving himself away from the wall and shaking his head, like the simple motion could clear the chaos in his brain.

 

“Black Widow’s leaving her target. It’s clear, nothing there. You going to be okay? I can call her in as back up if you want, but she’d take a few hours to get there.”

 

“I said I’m fine. I’m clearing the building, Soldier over and out.” Barnes pulled the ear piece out, letting it hang loose by his collarbone. Call in the Black Widow? Did he sound like he needed a damn babysitter?

 

He stalked down the corridor, towards an elevator. There’d been a codeword on the map for a basement level. Whatever this place hid, it’d be there. Maybe he’d find…

 

The sound of heavy footfalls stopped him in his tracks. Someone was coming, and they were close. How had he missed that? His eyes widened and he looked for cover, his heart pounding. The corridor was bare, badly lit, with no cover. He took step back, his fingers twitching. It only sounded like two people. He could take down two in his sleep. He slipped a knife from his sleeve and gripped it tight, settling into a slight crouch. One of the people, a man, was talking in a low voice.

 

“Seriously, can’t you smell that?” He said in Russian. “If the drains backed up again, I’m not cleaning it up. I’m not going near it!”

 

“Who cares, I want to get this patrol done. If something’s blocked, we’ll report it and let someone else deal with it. I got enough to deal with.” His partner replied. Barnes pressed himself into a dark corner, waiting for them to get close enough.

 

“You mean subject 162? He’s still functional?” They came around the corner, not looking at their surroundings. Complacency was an intruder’s greatest friend.

 

“Mostly. 162 is tough, but why I always have to guard him? All they do is dose him up, or take him to the chair. Even you could do it!”

 

“Hey, I did my time with 139. I can’t look at sausages the same way again-”

 

Barnes struck like a cobra. The knife in his hand dug into the jugular of one man and they fell to the floor. The second man let out a gasp, then slumped into the wall, a look of confusion on his face as his legs gave out from under him. Barnes second knife protruded from his chest, the blade sunk into his heart.

 

He collected the knives, liberating a gun from one of the bodies. Unlike the Black Widow’s target, Hydra had some presence here, and some test subjects. There was plenty of work for him to do.

 

He’d not expected the test subjects in Kiev, and when he’d seen them, he definitely hadn’t expected the sickening rush of pity, revulsion or the overwhelming need not to leave them locked up like animals.

 

It felt real, his wanting to save them. He hoped whoever he had been before Hydra was a good man, and he’d been told he was. This was the first time he believed it. The desire not to leave someone being kicked when they were down, it was a part of him from before, something he’d found for himself.

 

They’d looked at him like he could save them, and he could. He did. He’d never felt so free in his life.

 

 He dispatched five more guards with brutal efficiency before he got to the elevator. The final guard gave one last pathetic gurgle as the doors closed and Barnes began to descend. The elevator juddered to a stop at the lowest floor.

 

The floor looked the same as the one he’d come from, a few Hydra guards peppered around, but none alert enough to raise an alarm before he’d killed them. At the end of the last tunnel he searched stood a door with a keypad. He looked at it for a while, pondering his options.

 

He punched it hard, the little mechanism crumpling beneath his metal fist like it was made of paper. An alarm blared in the distance, muffled by the locked door. Barnes ducked around a corner and counted. Four, five, six, seven…

 

The door opened with the pounding of booted feet. Barnes switched to the machine pistol he’d taken from the first guard he’d killed, ducked out of cover and strafed the group as he went by, ducking behind a new looking crate.

 

Bullets whined over his head and hit the box with a heavy series of thuds. The box was solid, and all he was hit by were splinters. He fired blind over the top of the box and heard two bodies hitting the floor. He reloaded as the Hydra guards returned fire. Barnes took the glove from his metal hand and rubbed the palm against his trousers. It was a little gritty, but reflective. He angled it over his head, getting a good look at the positions of the remaining guards. He took a deep breath, steady, then dove out of cover and fired four times.

 

Four bodies hit the floor. Barnes didn’t dwell on how satisfied that made him. His efficiency at killing had long since ceased to be a surprise.

 

The roaring silence after the gunfire dissolved into an angry buzzing sound. Barnes picked himself up off the floor and started down the long corridor. It was full of doors.

 

The first few led to empty, bloody rooms, but the next ten, twenty were full of people. He moved towards the first, about to open the cage, when the occupant, a filthy, thin man dove at him, an arm stretched out through the bars.

 

“Hail Hydra.” He spat through a toothless mouth . “Hail hydra, hail. Hail hydra!” He convulsed as he reached out, trying to snag some part of Barnes. He backed out of reach. A strong hand grabbed him from behind. Barnes breath hitched in his lungs as the hand held tight, grasping him across the chest.

 

“Who are you? Are you Hydra, are you the enemy, who are you? Touch me and you’re dead! You’re dead, I swear you’re dead, who are you?!” Another man, this one without eyes. Barnes pulled himself out of man’s grasp, a sickening feeling forming in his gut. The next cell contained a dead man, the next a woman with her tongue cut out, screaming silently at him, fury scored into the dark scars marring her face.

 

The corridor swelled with sound, anger and plaintive cries and questions. Arms and hands scrabbled through the bars for him, every occupant who could still move trying to catch a piece of him. Some were sluggishly reaching, the fingers trembling and weak, but others were fast and strong and grasped like traps.

 

“Cut off one head, two more shall take its place; cut off one head two more shall take its place…”

“I’ll tear your spine out. I’ll pull your skull from the back of your head!”

“Hail Hydra!”

_Hey Sarge,are  we going dancing?_

“They took my ring finger, but I got two more. I took em, I took em and you can’t ever get em back.”

“What are my orders?”

 “Cut off one head…”

“I’ll do it, I’ll do it, it won’t even hurt-”

_You shall be the new fist of HYDRA._

“It’s so bright. I can’t look, can’t look!”

“Is it someone new?”

 “Hail Hydra!”

_Sergeant…_

“Oh Soldier, Soldier, won’t you marry me..?”

“He said he’d come, he promised! Why didn’t he come?!”

“I’m the success, I was fine until the blue came, take it away, take it away, hail Hydra, hail Hydra!”

_Sergeant James…Bunchanan… Barnes…_

 

Barnes threw his hands over his ears. There was too much sound, too many voices.  He was drowning in it. Hands scratched at his wrists, his ankles, tried to catch his clothes. Someone grabbed at his elbow and he jerked back with a cry. He stepped too far. Another hand snaked its way through another set of bars; winding its way through his hair whilst the torn fingernails of the other hand scratched along his face.

 

“Are you blue too? We’re all blue, we’re blue we’re blue, we’re blue and then we are RED.” Barnes broke two of the man’s fingers as he threw himself out of reach, scrambling away.

 

He didn’t know he’d been crawling along the floor until he blinked and found himself sat at the other end of the corridor, his back flat against the cold metal door at the end of it. The hands remained, but the voices died down, the buzz subsiding into moaning.

 

His hands trembled as he ran them over his face, brushing away dirt and blood. He pulled his hands back, letting out a long shuddering breath. All those people…Hydra broke them all.

 

“Soldier? Soldier, you there?” A fuzzy voice near his collarbone asked. Barnes pushed the earpiece back in, focusing on Sam’s voice.

 

“I’m here, no need to shout.”

 

“Are you okay? What was that?”

  
“Test subjects. They’re different from the ones before, Hydra’s been playing in their brains. Whoever they were, there’s nothing left.” The statement hung between them for a few moments.

 

“You know that’s not you, right? Hydra beat you down, but you’re not broken. You-”

 

“I get it.” Barnes snapped. “What’s the status on the others?”

 

“Black Widow is en-route to the target. Iron Man and Hawkeye have taken out most of the resistance. They found Cap’s shield a little while ago. They’ll find him Soldier.”

 

The door behind him opened abruptly. His back hit the floor and he looked up into the barrel of a gun and a shocked guard.

 

Barnes didn’t hesitate. He kicked his legs up, knocking the gun barrel away and hitting the guard under the chin. As the guard went down, he flipped upright, grabbing the guards gun out of his hands and aiming it around the room. Two more Hydra guards were posted, but they were too slow. Barnes shot them with unerring accuracy before they’d had time to raise their weapons. A young man in a lab coat cowered behind a metal table. He sounded like he was crying.

 

“Please don’t kill me!” the scientist yelled, “I’ll do whatever you want, please don’t kill me!” Barnes looked around the room. There was a bank of computers, data readouts piling up on the floor on old reams of printer paper and a thick heavy curtain that didn’t quite block all of the bright blue light behind it.

 

“Shut it off.” Barnes ordered. The scientist winced.

 

“But 162, the subject isn’t-”

 

“I said shut it down, now.” Barnes repeated, raising the gun. The scientist scrambled to obey, flicking switches, pushing levers and pulling plugs as fast as he could. The monitors on the computers flickered to black and the printer died with a whine.

 

“Soldier, it was a trap. I repeat, Siberia was a trap. Cap’s not there, Iron Man and Hawkeye are under heavy fire. ETA on Black Widow is an hour. Soldier, he’s in your area.”

 

 The curtain was pulled back and Barnes forgot how to breathe.

 

There it was. The chair, the machine, the equipment that’d been used to wipe him, over and over, and Steve lying back, strapped into it. The scientist pulled something and the blue glow subsided, only coming now from some ceremonial looking stick.

 

Barnes was next to the chair before he could blink. Steve looked awful. Blood was matted into his hair and dried on his skin. Whatever skin wasn’t covered by his clothes was black and blue. One of his eyes was swollen shut. He was also out cold.

 

“Damn Steve, we gotta stop meeting like this.” Barnes murmured, pulling bits of the machinery away from Steve. The scientist stood on the other side of the chair, removing wires and electrodes and a delicate looking drip. Steve winced as the needle was pulled out of his arm, then went slack again.

 

“He’ll metabolise the drugs in about three hours or so,” the scientist said, switching the last of the machinery off. “He’ll be able to move beforehand, but he won’t be fully cognisant.” Barnes fixed the scientist with a hard stare. The lab coated man cringed and backed away. “I helped, please, I’m helping! Don’t kill me.”

 

“How long til he wakes up?” Barnes asked. The scientist wrung his hands.

 

“Could be twenty minutes, maybe thirty? We have to keep him dosed all the time. The first day we had some difficulties, he kept struggling.”

 

“Sounds about right. He never did give up easy.” Barnes said. Another memory flashed in front of his eyes, Steve but smaller, bruised up pretty bad but still standing. He swiped at his eyes, brushing the image away, trying to concentrate on the present.

 

Something buzzed in Barnes ear and he remembered Sam and the others.

 

“Falcon, this is Soldier. I’ve found the package.”

 

“Acknowledged Soldier. Iron Man and Hawkeye are still in the middle of a situation, I’m not going to be available again until it’s resolved. Are you clear to extract the package?”

 

“All clear here. Contact me when you can, I’ll keep him safe.”

 

“Thanks. Over and out.”

 

Barnes took out the earpiece again, hoping the rest of the Avengers were okay. He shook himself a little. They weren’t his concern. He shouldn’t get involved.

 

“You should go. There’s a service elevator, it goes to the ground floor. Take it and leave, before more of them come.” The scientist started to hurry around the lab, grabbing papers and ripping wires out of the walls.

 

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?!” Barnes yelled, starting towards the man. The scientist jerked back from the wiring, nearly dropping the papers.

 

“I’m leaving too. You killed most of them; you haven’t killed me yet, so I’m escaping.”

 

“You’re escaping?” Barnes said disbelievingly. “You think I’m going to let you just walk out of here, after seeing what you’re responsible for?!” He gestured to the doorway he’d fallen through and the test subjects out there. The scientist cringed again.

 

“I know what I’ve done. I know there is no forgiveness for me. I will hear their voices in my head until the day I die.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “So what can I do? Dying serves no purpose, but this?” He held up his hand, the copper wires bent and broken between his fingers. “If I do this, break what I can and leave, then the experiments stop. The suffering stops, even if it’s only for a little while, until they fix everything. It’s not much, but it’s what I can do. It’s all the penance I can do here.”

 

“You’re trying to make up for what you’ve done as part of Hydra? Up until about ten minutes ago, you were working for them.” Barnes growled. “I’m not buyin’ it.”

 

“Buy whatever you want. I’m taking the research and I’m walking out the door. If you kill me,” The scientist swallowed thickly. “If you kill me, you’ll have to shoot me in the back. I know you’re capable of it, Winter Soldier. Just – Hydra doesn’t need to brainwash you to force you to help them. They have simpler methods of persuasion. If you can disobey them to save the people you care about, then please, show pity to someone who is not brave, but is willing to try and defy them when they’re given a chance to do it.” He gripped the papers tighter and held Barnes gaze for a few moments before turning to the mould double doors leading to the service elevator. He crossed the floor with stiff, faltering steps. He reached the doors, opened one and looked back, his face white. Barnes didn’t take his eyes off the man.

 

Steve groaned behind Barnes and he turned. The doors banged shut behind the scientist as he took at a run. Barnes wondered what the result of his first act of mercy would be.

 

“Wha- Where am…” Steve fought to sit up, his eyes screwed up in pain.

 

“Steve! Steve hang on, just relax a minute okay.” Barnes pressed his flesh hand gently against Steve’s chest and he stilled, opening his eyes. Barnes started a little. Steve’s eyes were blue. Of course, they were blue, but they looked a shade too bright, electric instead of the steady deep blue he knew. Wait, he knew? Since when?

 

“Who’s there? What’s going on?” Steve sighed and leant back, biting back a groan. Barnes’ mind raced.

 

Every time they met, it was Bucky this, Bucky that, Steve radiating a stifling sentimentality, thick nostalgia and raw pity poring off him. He had to stop it. Sam said to talk to him; Steve would listen and give it up. But some other part of him, some strange territorial side that couldn’t leave Steve to suffer any more than he could tear off his other arm. That part of him heard the name Bucky and it- it felt good. Barnes hated it.

 

 “Look, Cap, I got something to say to you, and this isn’t the right time or place to say it, but it looks like we’ve got a minute-”

 

The sound of thudding feet broke his train of thought. Steve’s eyes snapped to the door leading to the cells and Barnes swore under his breath. He crossed the room in ten steps, leant out of the door and destroyed the keypad with one hand, pulling the door shut as he came back in. The smack of bullets against brick met his ears and a fragment slashed across his forehead before he got the door closed. He crushed what he could see of the locking mechanism on his side of the door as well. In moments there was a lot of shouting and the sound of gunfire on the other side of the door. Barnes stepped back, but the door held. Hydra had built it to keep people trapped, and it served its function well.

 

“Scratch what I said about that minute.” Barnes ground out. He jerked around in surprise at the sound of a body hitting the floor. Steve had gotten out of the chair, but not gotten far. He tried to push himself off the floor, but his arms weren’t strong enough to hold him yet. “That was a dumb idea. You’re still working through whatever they pumped into you. ” Barnes huffed, kneeling next to Steve and swinging one of his arms across his shoulders. He pulled Steve up as he stood, placing a hand around Steve’s waist to stop him slipping down. “Thinking you can walk like this?” Steve nodded, trying to regain his footing. Finally he turned his attention to Barnes and his face lit up.

 

“Bucky? Is that you?”

 

The side of him wanting to be someone new warred with the side clawing to be Bucky again. He searched Steve’s face for an answer that wasn’t there. Steve’s smile started to falter and Barnes made a decision.

 

“Sure pal, who else would I be?” he said lightly.

 

He was going to regret this.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

Clint threw himself over a metal table, loosing an arrow as he dropped into cover. Above him, he heard the shrill whine of Stark repulsors. It sounded like Iron Man was holding his own well enough against the Hydra heavies on the floor above. Speaking of … he leant around the cover, chancing a glimpse at the remaining soldiers, only to see ten more hurtling into the room, guns blazing. He jerked back behind the table as bullets zipped through the air. The metal started to cave around him under the onslaught, buckling like soft bronze. One broke through and slammed into the vibranium shield he had strapped to his back. Damn, that was close.

 

“Falcon, what’s the Widow’s ETA?” He barked into the radio.

 

“She’s inbound on the ground, she’ll be there in ten minutes. You two holding up alright?” Sam asked.

 

“We’re fine. These guys have gone for quantity over quality, we’re thinning them out.” Stark broke in over the line. Barton swore under his breath.

 

“Maybe you could make me a quiver with more quantity next time.” He groused, ducking out of cover and firing, rolling behind the remains of an old computer bank. Around him, the crumbling walls of the old facility were turned to powder by the gunfire. There were two more whining pulses and two more screams from upstairs.

 

“It’s on my to do list,” Stark grumbled. “By the time Widow gets here there won’t be anything left to do. We’ve got this covered.” Stark slammed one of his opponents into a wall. The state of the building hampered them; the walls were too fragile to stand up to most of Stark’s weapons. He’d figured out early on he had to stick to repulsors or risk bringing the whole place down around their ears. The entrance to the complex had crumbled into dust when Stark tried to use one of his smaller calibre missiles.

 

“Speak for yourself.” Barton grabbed a machine pistol from the ground and strafed the group, shooting straight through the brick dust and tiny paint flecks in the air. Three more down, eight to go. An ominous sounding creak came from the direction of the roof and Barton frowned, looking up. It sounded close.

 

“You struggling there Champ?” Stark teased lightly, a tight note in his voice tainting the jibe.

 

“Just another day at the office for me. How’s the suit doing? We don’t need to plug it in any time soon do we?” Another burst of gunfire took his attention and he hunkered down behind the bank again, bullets starting to punch holes in the machinery.

 

“Back-up generator’s working like a charm. JARVIS tells me we’re good for another hour if we keep going this pace.” Another set of bangs and repulsor blasts echoed his statement. Barton risked an exploding arrow into the swarming HYDRA agents, a grim smile on his face as he registered another two fatalities.

 

“Another hour? I thought you’d have gotten bored after the first one!”

 

“Hey, I’d have gotten out of here ages ago if I didn’t have to keep coming back and saving your ass.”

 

“It’s an ass worth saving,” Clint jabbed back. “Besides, team work. We’re getting out of here together, unless you think I should have left you to the charming guy with the bazooka.” Another four guys joined the fray. Damn, where the hell did they keep coming from?!

 

“Oh, seriously? Hey, I’m starting to think these guys aren’t a secret organisation at all, they’re an ant colony.” The building shook and Barton grabbed onto a wall.

 

“Careful with the ordinance, we’re four floors up. Well, you’re five, but eh, semantics. You got more coming after you too?”

 

“Not any heavy hitters. All that thinning I’ve been doing just got thickened again. I swear the Chitauri weren’t this bad.” Stark moaned. “Watch out, I’m going to light these guys up.”

 

“No loadbearing walls!” The building rocked and Barton saw twelve shapes whip past one of the windows. “Do you need back up?”

 

“I’m fine,” came the short reply. There was a small pause. “Oh wait, not fine, not fine! Hawkeye, find some cover!”

 

Clint yanked the shield off his back and curled into a ball beneath it, just as the ceiling collapsed. Iron Man slammed into the floor and Clint lifted the shield, picking off HYDRA goons as they struggled to see through the dust and asbestos. Five retreated after the rest bit the dust and Clint stood, dusting himself off and tucking the shield onto his back again.

 

“Thanks,” Clint coughed. Stark boosted himself off the ground and turned to the hole he’d just made. Clint glanced up. “Hey, just how much of your armour design did you give SHIELD? You know, just out of curiosity.”

 

“I didn’t give them anything.” Stark growled, looking up at what looked like a smaller facsimile of the War Monger armour, glaring faceplate looming down over them. “Back up, move!” Stark grabbed Barton by the front of his shirt and threw him across the room, his other hand raised towards the armour as it jumped down, landing with a heavy thud that shook the floorboards. Clint looked up from the ground in time to see it blasting Stark across the room with a familiar orange glowing rifle. He shot an arrow at the figure. It bounced off the reinforced armour, but grabbed the grunts attention and the barrel was pointed in his direction.

 

“Aww, not the destroyer gun,” He grumbled, grabbing hold of the shield again as the armoured man pulled the trigger. Barton nearly let go of it as the shield took the brunt of the blast, the force making the disk feel like it weighed somewhere between a lead weight and Thor’s hammer. He kept the thing up, just, but something was wrong. If only he could think what it was-

 

“Hawkeye!” Stark sounded aghast over the radio.

 

Oh. He was airborne. That was new.

 

The world snapped to black when he hit the floor outside.

 

\--(x)--

 

Natasha put her foot to the foot, throttling towards the sounds of fighting. The four by four bounced over uneven ground, the suspension creaking violently. Sam was talking, calm and succinct in her ear.

 

“They’re taking fire. Hawkeye’s on the fourth floor, Iron Man’s on the fifth, both facing multiple hostiles. They’ve been stuck in the building for approximately fifty five minutes after being ambushed on the seventh floor and separated.  Iron Man couldn’t get close enough to Hawkeye to grab him and fly them both out, Hawkeye didn’t bring any grappling hook arrows, so he’s stuck making his way down the hard way. The entrance is mess, but if HYDRA are funnelling their guys in, there’s still access. If you neutralise the forces going in, it should turn the tides so they both make their way down, or the resistance will lower to the point where Iron Man can extract Hawkeye and we can nuke the site from orbit.”

 

“Do you want to rephrase that?” Natasha said lowly, her voice hard and touched with annoyance. Sam swallowed on the other end.

 

“Oh, sorry. I guess nukes are a touchy subject after New York-” He broke off, listening to the others.

 

“Something I should know about?” She asked. The building was in sight, light blue pulses coming from the mid-level floors.

 

“Just more HYDRA on their tail. Nothing they can’t handle.” Sam said, a little too calm that time. If she wasn’t already pushing the truck as fast as it could go, she’d have floored it. “I’ll patch you into their loop.” There was a tiny squeal in her ear as the signal was picked up.

 

“-mour design did you give SHIELD in the end. You know, just out of curiosity?” She swerved around a fence post, kicking up dirt as she scanned her surroundings for wherever HYDRA was entering the premises.

 

“I didn’t give them anything.” She couldn’t see any movement above ground. She pulled in close to one of the destroyed walls, checked her pistols and slipped out. Entrance, where would they be going in from. “Back up, move!” The blast sounded like a sonic boom, tearing her attention upwards as a burst of orange light rippled across the fourth floor. Brick dust rained down as the whole place shook from the force of it.

 

“Aww, not the destroyer gun,” Clint said in her ear. The blast tore through the air again and she gritted her teeth as a familiar figure plunged from the window.

 

“Hawkeye!” She barely heard Stark yelling over the line, her heart caught in her throat as she ran, eyes fixed on Clint.

 

“Come on, move, do something,” She muttered under her breath, hoping Barton had something up his sleeve. Her hopes were shattered when he slammed into the ground. She stopped running, eyes wide.

 

“What’s happened? What’s your status? Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, check in.” Sam’s voice was urgent in her ear.

 

“Hawkeye… He’s down. I’m going to assess the damage.”   


“You’re outside? Right, I’m bringing this place down now. Clear the area.” Stark voice was iron over the line, cold and hard. Natasha started towards Clint, her legs moving jerkily, blood rushing through her ears. Above her, she heard the whine of Tony’s repulsors as he smashed through a window, his shoulder mounted missiles pounding into the building.

 

Clint was lying curled up in a ball on the ground, eyes shut and one of his legs at an unnatural angle. Steve’s shield was underneath him, cradling his head and torso. She squatted next to him, reaching out to touch his neck. Her hands didn’t shake.

 

“Hey. Tickles.” She snatched her hand back like she’d been burned as Clint twitched and shuffled a little, settling down again for a moment before the shock wore off and his eyes opened. “Ok,” he said thickly. “This looks bad.” He glanced down at his leg, grimacing.

 

“You’ve had worse.” Natasha felt her chest ease up. “Did Steve teach you that?” She pointed at the shield. Clint nodded, wincing.

 

“He said he jumped off the top of the Triskelion like this. Shield absorbed the impact, he was up and running like he hadn’t fallen however many stories it was. Sounded like a good idea.” Natasha could stop the smile slipping onto her face, but she didn’t.

 

“Come on, we’ve got to move.” As if to punctuate her point, a lead lined roof line thunked into the ground next to here and stood upright, like a knife stuck into a chopping board, “or the next one of those is going in you thick skull.”

 

“You’ve a way of making a man feel loved.” Clint sighed. She pulled him onto her shoulder, letting him limp by with her as a crutch. “I’m keeping hold of the shield.” He said, hugging it to his side.

 

“Of course you are.” She led him to the car and put him in the back seat, straightening his broken leg. He grit his teeth as she did, wincing as she tried to align it. “We need to get you to a doctor.” She murmured. Clint hissed in pain as she made it as straight as she could.

 

She’d just taken her hands off his leg when she was hurled to the ground by a shockwave. She landed hard on her back, blinking up at the column of fire.

 

“Widow, you okay?” Stark was worried in her ear. She spotted him hovering near the edge of the thick black smoke rising from the inferno.

 

“Yeah. Hawkeye and I were out of the way. Thanks for the warning by the way; I didn’t think you were carrying that kind of firepower.”

 

“I’m not. I think that was going to be the grand finale of operation ‘Destroy the Avengers’. The building was wired to blow the whole time, I just set it off.” Stark landed next to her as she got up, dusting herself off. “HYDRA really want us dead.” She looked him up and down, eyebrows raised. His suit was ravaged, dented and chipped and sparking in some places. A large circle was burnt deep into the chest plate.

 

“They want us dead, but not Steve, they kept him alive.” Natasha lips were pursed, her eyes hard. “We should have found a way to get him out sooner.”

 

 “Guys? I hate to interrupt the righteous brooding and all but, you know, broken leg here, not getting any better. Can we move out?” Barton moaned from the back of the truck. Stark shrugged and got in the passenger seat, taking his helmet off. Natasha got in and they pulled away from the burning shell of the old facility.

 

“Falcon, this is Black Widow, we’re out. Target is dust and we’re coming home. ETA is two hours.”

 

“I’ll keep an eye out for you. Just so you know, the Soldier has the package and they’re away.” Clint relaxed in the back, his head knocking against the door.

 

“Mission’s over, can we stop calling him ‘The Package’ now? I mean, it sounds like we’re talking about his package, and as much as I love the guy, the less we talk about packages, especially his, just in general, the better.” Stark said, his fingers drumming against his metal plated legs. “You’re sure we can trust this guy, Wilson? He used to Bucky Barnes, boy wonder, sure, but he’s had seventy years of being brainwashed and crazy. Not the most reassuring guy to have galloping to your rescue.”

 

“He took care of me for a week when he didn’t know me from Adam.” Sam’s voice was flat over the line. “He’ll complete the mission.”

 

“Mission? He thinks it’s a mission? Or is that a military way of saying he went to save the princess from the tower with nothing but the power of his undying squishy friend feelings?”

 

“I don’t know.” Sam sighed. “I talked to him, tried to get him to talking about what’d happened to him, how he was holding up. I’m not going to lie, he’s got some serious issues that he’s not even started dealing with, but I got one thing out of him that I’m holding onto.”

 

“What’s that?” Stark asked.

 

“He told me he wanted to be a good person.” Sam replied.

 

“What, that’s it? You trust him, just like that, because he quoted My Name is Earl at you?”

 

“You saying people can’t change Stark?” Sam fired back.

 

“It’s the situation we’re in, so there’s no use griping about it.” Natasha cut in. “Sam, you’re going to have to tell Barnes to find somewhere to lay low. You said they weren’t hurt?”

 

“Last communication said they were away from the base, going to find a place to hole up until Steve gets his bearings back. Apparently HYDRA beat him pretty bad, but it’s nothing the serum can’t fix up in a few days.” Sam recited.

 

“Okay. Right now we need to get you and Clint to a doctor. I’ve got some contacts left, but they’re out o the country. It’ll take a day to contact the doctor, but after we’ve dropped you two off, Stark and I will go after Steve. Barnes gets to go his own way as far as I’m concerned.”

 

“Fine by me. The stitches you guys put in me are holding great, but I’d like to get my hands on some painkillers and antibiotics.” Sam said.

 

“Relay that the plan to Barnes. We’ll be with you soon.” She pushed the accelerator harder, watching the black column of smoke recede in the rearview mirror.

 

“Got it. See you soon. Falcon over and out.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Three hours.” Barnes grumbled under his breath, dragging a very unconscious super soldier through a field of scraggly brambles. “He’ll be _fine_ in three hours, they said.” Their shadows cast a deformed silhouette. It looked like someone had grafted them together.

 

Why couldn’t Stark and Hawkeye have found him? They wanted him back in the first place. They should be the ones having to deal with him and _this_.

 

They were moving too slowly. Barnes watched the world turn dark by degrees, their route fading to inky black as walked. They needed to find shelter soon, and they needed to be farther from the compound. At this rate, they wouldn’t last the night if Hydra came looking.

 

He’d have been fine on his own. He could have found some ditch, camouflaged himself and waited out the patrols that were coming, because they would be coming. Hydra don’t just let you go. But he wasn’t alone. Steve was there, mostly catatonic and all useless. If he woke up, no matter what condition he was in, he’d be a sitting duck. Barnes couldn’t put him in a hole, cover him over and hope he’d be okay.

 

Well, he could. It was entirely possible, but he shouldn’t. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t?

 

The wind blew against him for a moment and he gagged. If the fact they less than twenty miles from the facility made them easy targets, the smell was practically a homing beacon. At least he hadn’t had to sneak Steve out through the sewers; Steve might not smell of roses, but he didn’t need a sponge bath. Barnes would have ditched him in the middle of the damn field if he had.

 

A loud ripping sound tore him from his thoughts. The hem of his pants caught on one of the tall thorny tangles, tearing almost to the knee. Barnes growled under his breath, his metal hand squeezing a bruise into Steve’s side. Steve didn’t seem to notice.

 

“Great. Just – great. Perfect. Stuck in the middle of nowhere with no food, no shelter, no back up and no plan.” Barnes muttered. “Hydra are probably going to find us the second we stop for the night, so we can’t stop walking, but we can’t keep walking because I’m probably going to keel over. I swear if I stop I’ll fall down and I won’t be able to get up and we’ll be found, we’ll be killed and _I’ve torn up my only pair of pants_!” He kicked a dead bramble out of the way with more force than was strictly necessary. And a nearby rock.

 

“It’s not enough that I rescue a bunch of people, and I save Sam, and I’m not loyal to Hydra anymore, no. I’ve got to go and rescue this idiot, who was dumb enough to let them catch him. Super soldier, practically invincible, the only reason I got the drop on you was because you won’t fight me. How did Hydra get their hands on you? Did they ask you nicely and you were too polite to say ‘oh, thanks but no thanks, I’d rather not be tortured this century,’” Another rock flew through the air, courtesy of Barnes boot, disappearing into an overgrown hedge. It greeted him with a rustle, unfazed by his tirade. The gate through it was completely jammed shut.

 

“Oh now this; this is exactly what I need.” Barnes manoeuvred Steve until he had hung over the fence and stretched his aching shoulder. “Can’t even find a piece of metal around here that isn’t useless at its job.” He shot an accusatory look at his arm, half expecting it to give up and fall off his shoulder.

 

It didn’t. He turned his attention back to Captain America, dignified, righteous, noble, currently bent double over a rusty cow gate, drooling. Barnes glared at his broad back.

 

“And you’re no help.” He vaulted the gate easily, grabbing Steve by the shoulders and starting to haul him over. The gate groaned under his weight. “You are so annoying, the dumbest;” he pulled. Steve didn’t budge. “Stupidest, most stubborn,” he tugged again. Nothing. He adjusted his grip, hands under Steve’s arms. “Heavy sonofa..!” Steve shifted; the gate broke and sent them both tumbling to the ground. Barnes choked out a breath, crushed by Steve’s sudden weight and the super elbow lodged in his sternum.

 

Barnes wheezed, seeing stars, before realising he actually was seeing stars. Night had fallen, turning the pale pinks and yellowy orange to blue and black. It was like looking at Steve’s skin.

 

“I hate you.” He grumbled.

 

“Hurmaflurgl.” Steve replied.

 

\--(x)--

 

It took two more hours, but Barnes found somewhere he’d deemed ‘good enough’ to hide them. For a safe house, it wasn’t particularly safe; nor was it much of a house any more. It was the most pitiful broken down shack he’d ever laid eyes on, all dust and rot and broken windows, with a dry, dirty cellar. It was perfect.

 

He spent an hour plundering the buildings in the village for anything he could use. There was more around than he’d anticipated, but it didn’t surprise him. A lot of homes and farmsteads had been abandoned like this, some with food still on the table, after the disaster. Who’d want their family to stay anywhere near the Chernobyl radiation zone? He came back to Steve clean and newly outfitted, laden with moth eaten duvets, damp pillows and tins of preserves.

 

He made up a pair of pallets, putting Steve on one. He was still catatonic. He adjusted the pillow under Steve’s head. No reaction. He prodded his face, right on one of the more violently purple bruises. He didn’t move. He poked him in the ribs. Zilch. He kicked him in the shin. Nothing, not even a twitch.

 

He didn’t know whether he considered that a good thing or not. On the one hand, Steve not giving him speeches about friendship, trust and loyalty every five minutes was infinitely less annoying than the alternative. On the other, the longer Steve was asleep, the longer whatever Hydra was doing to him had to take hold. If he woke up, at least they could assess what kind of condition he was in, maybe figure out what the hell it was Hydra had been doing all week, aside from using him as a punching bag.

 

All he had to do was wake up. Barnes lay down and watched him from the other pallet. They were nearly side by side, the space between them so if he stretched out with his metal arm, he could only just reach him with the tips of his fingers. Which was apparently what he was doing.

 

He snatched his hand back like he’d been burned. He screwed his eyes shut, slumping back on the sheets. His head hit his pillow with a little puff of dust. When he opened his eyes, he was holding the traitorous steel hand in front of his face. The starlight caught on the metal and dust motes. He moved his hand through the cloud, the flecks flitting around his fingers like fireflies by a pond. He’d never used it to be gentle, at least, not that he could remember.

 

He’d been gentle with Steve once upon a time, and although his hand wasn’t his real flesh and blood, reaching out to check Steve was okay was still muscle memory, especially when he was sick or hurt. He pulled his hand into a hard fist, feeling the metal plates lock together. The dust skittered away. He was a weapon. Weapon’s don’t comfort or heal. Weapons attack and destroy.

 

He was so tired of being a weapon.

 

He let his fist fall heavily onto his chest.  His version of the serum had done great things for his stamina, but he was at the limit. The exhausted ache of nine days without real rest weighed heavily on him. He tried to force his eyes open, but every blink made his eyes heavier.

 

He didn’t realise he had fallen asleep until he felt the hand on his shoulder. He snarled, eyes snapping open. He jerked the offending arm and flipped his assailant over. His hand scrabbled at his ankle, reaching for a knife he didn’t have whilst his flesh arm held the other man down.

 

“Bucky, hey!”

 

The red haze shattered in a second. Steve’s face swam in front of him, all mottled skin and electric blue eyes. He pushed himself up, his breath a hiss as his muscles stung, protesting the movement.

 

“You’re awake.” He said. Steve misjudged the height of the room and bumped into the ceiling as he stood up.

 

“Ow.” Steve rubbed his head. “I am now. Jeez Buck, I know you get twitchy sometimes but that was something else. Where you having a nightmare or something?”

 

“What do you think? My whole life is a damn nightmare.” Barnes shot back. “Don’t play dumb, it doesn’t suit you.”

 

“Yeah, that’s your shtick.” Steve retorted. “Fine. I get it. It’s going to be one of _those_ days.” Steve paced the perimeter of the room, stopping at the dirty little window. The swelling on his face looked better, the bruises fading to a dirty yellow hue.

 

“How do you feel?” Barnes asked, looking him over critically. Steve grimaced.

 

“Sore. I feel worse than the last time you pulled me out of an alley fight.”

 

“Oh, story time.” Barnes snorted. ”Great. Are we going to hear the one about how we’re best friends forever or your favourite, where you save me like a princess from a tower and say you’ll forgive my every sin if I follow you?” He crossed his arms, glaring a hole in Steve’s chest, right around where the bullseye of a star should have been.

 

“Is that what you’re sore about? I’m not going to apologise for saving you, but-” Steve took an abortive step towards him. His eyes raked over Barnes face. “I don’t… I never forced you to follow me anywhere.”

 

“Well you’re forcing me now!” Barnes jumped to his feet, forgetting the low ceiling, slamming his head into it too. “Ow! Damn it!” His hands shot to his head. Steve was next to him in seconds.

 

“Woah, hey, I felt that from across the room. You okay?” Steve’s hands were gentle on Barnes’ arm. “Let me see.”

 

“I don’t need a damn babysitter Rogers!” He twisted out Steve’s grip. “It’s just a bump.” He lowered his hands, looking for any blood. They were clean. He let out a long breath between gritted teeth.

 

“So it’s Rogers now?” Steve sighed. Barnes scowled at him.

 

“You’re the one calling me Bucky. Careful, or I’ll call you something worse.” Like objective, target, possible murder victim -

 

“We work with a guy called Dum Dum. You think you can do better than that?” Steve chuckled, nudging him with his elbow. Barnes swallowed a noise fighting its way up his throat. It wasn’t funny. There was no way in hell he was laughing. He was the Winter Soldier. He never laughed.

 

“Sure can, Shirley.” Pretty sure the Winter Soldier never teased anyone either, but if it would get Steve to stop looking at him like he’d watched Barnes killed his dog, it’d be worth it.

 

“I knew I was never going to live that down!” Steve bumped him again. Barnes brow wrinkled. Why was he allowing that? And-

 

“Live what down?”

 

“Come on, you know. Little Stevie Temple? That was, what, the third time you ever saved my bacon? I wish I knew where they got the wig from, it’s not like they were just giving those away.” Steve scratched his chin thoughtfully.

 

“Yeah yeah, I get it.” Barnes said. Steve drew back, stung by his sharp tone.

 

“Look, I know you’re having a bad day, but I ain’t going anywhere, no matter how hard you try and push me away. The other guys-”

 

“The others are your friends, not mine.” Barnes cut in coldly. “I’ll work with them, sure, but don’t expect me to get friendly with them.”

 

“Bucky.”

 

“Shirley.”

 

“Stop it!”

 

“I will if you will.”

 

“I’m not going to.”

 

“Neither am I.”

 

“Bucky-”

 

“Shirley.” This time Steve looked like he was going to punch him. Barnes felt something lift inside him, a weight gone from his gut. Finally, a reaction that wasn’t simpering compassion and devotion! His eyes were practically aglow with fury.

 

Wait a minute.

 

Barnes leant closer. They really were glowing. They were the wrong colour too. He squinted in the gloom. The closer he looked, the eerier it was. Steve’s eyes seemed to crackle, icy flecks arching his irises.

 

“What are you doing?” Steve shoved him back, red flaring in his cheeks. Barnes growled at him.

 

“Hold still, I -”

 

“Back off!” Steve pushed him further back, his mouth a thin line of anger. Great, the one time he didn’t want Steve to keep his distance – Barnes glanced down at his metal hand, dull in the dark. Gentle. You can do this. Just be… _him_.

 

The easy smile came to his lips like it belonged there.

 

“Sorry pal,” He held his hands up, getting out of Steve’s space. “I’m outta line.”

 

“Yeah, you are. What’s with you?” Steve sat on the pallet, rubbing the back of his neck. Barnes flinched. What the hell Steve expect him to say? ‘Well, I thought you were Hydra when you woke me up, so I tried to kill you, and now I’m scared there’s something wrong. You’ve got something in your _eye_. He wandered over and sat on his heels by Steve.

 

“We’re friends, right Steve?” He winced mentally. Great start. “I mean, we grew up together, fought together-”

 

“Fine, I forgive you for the whole name calling thing.” Steve shoved him backwards, a small smile inching its way onto his face as Barnes wobbled, tipped over and fell the short distance to the floor.

 

“That’s not what I meant. You trust me, right?” Barnes dusted his palms off on his pants. Steve looked him over sceptically.

 

“Are you dying or something?” He said, his voice stern and Captain America Serious. It would have been very authoritative if he wasn’t smirking.

 

“What? No!” Barnes shoved him back. It seemed like the thing to do.

 

“Then what is it? You’re moodier than a teenager; you’re talking about trust and friendship. You sound like a bad movie.”

 

“I sound like you.” Barnes retorted. Steve rolled his eyes.

 

“I’m Captain America; I’m supposed to sound like a bad movie.” His face dropped into a campaign poster smile. “Are you ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”

 

Barnes stilled. His spine snapped straight, his muscles tensed and Bucky fell away from him.

 

“That’s a bad joke.” He got up from beside Steve and went to check their supplies. They mainly consisted of lightly irradiated tinned corned beef, out of date twenty years ago. It was probably still good. He grabbed one and threw at Steve’s head. “Eat it. We’ve got a long walk coming up. If my hunch is right, no one will think we’ve come this way, but if we get spotted, you’ll need your strength to keep running.” He cracked a can open himself, wrinkling his nose at the smell. Corned beef did not mature well.

 

“Bucky, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re here now. I know Hydra-”

 

“You don’t know a god damned thing.” Barnes bit out. “So sit down, shut up and stay out of my way. I don’t want to look at you right now.”

 

He shoved as many cans as he could carry into a bag. Hopefully they’d find something better along the way. The mouldy clothes he’d found itched like hell too.

 

Steve was quiet as Barnes packed up, collecting his knives and slipping the bag of supplies over his shoulder. He stood behind Barnes and let him lead the way back to the ground floor of the ruined little house. He only spoke up when they got outside.

 

“We’re running?”

 

“Yep.” Barnes got his bearings outside. The wind whipped through his hair, a chill in the air.

 

“Hydra are chasing us?”

 

“Unless you managed to piss off some other evil organisations and didn’t tell me. Now keep your trap shut. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and a lot of attention not to attract when we do it.” They started south again, hiking out of the abandoned village. The dirt road leading out would have taken them in the right direction, so they ended up parallel to it, keeping as far out of sight of the road as they could without losing it.

 

They had a few close calls.

 

The first time two Hydra soldiers walked by, talking loudly as they poked the barrel of their guns into small bushes by the roadside, Barnes almost laughed. They couldn’t have been less stealthy if they had a neon sign over their heads. It seemed the two men didn’t want to be the ones to find the Winter Soldier. He couldn’t blame them. Still, he wasn’t going to kill them, despite their proximity. Better they leave and report back that the targets weren’t in the area than not go back at all and raise suspicion.

 

Discretion was the better part of valour, and the smartest move they had. The few other near misses were the same.

 

By nightfall they found another abandoned village, this time with a concrete bunker adjacent to one of the larger looking houses, underground and half stocked with supplies. The door creaked and didn’t shut all the way, but so long as they kept dark and quiet, no one would find them.

 

Barnes kicked a pair of fold out camp beds into shape. With their age, he didn’t know if they’d take the weight of a super soldier and a guy with a very heavy arm, but he’d chance falling a couple of inches through some canvas in the night over sleeping on concrete. Just the thought of it gave him a crick in the neck.

 

He sat on one, lowering his weight onto it slowly. The material groaned, but held.

 

“I don’t think these are going to break. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, but this is how they used to.” Steve was sat on the floor, eyes closed and his head back against the rough wall. He looked asleep. Barnes got up and stepped over, kicking at Steve’s shoe.

 

“Hey, you’re not asleep already. I know you’re not asleep. You can walk for days without a nap, this shouldn’t wipe you out.”

 

Steve didn’t move. Barnes ran a hand through his long hair, kneeling. He reached out, his metal hand landing on Steve’s shoulder.

 

“Rogers?” He shook him. Steve’s head slumped onto his chest, limp as a rag doll. “Ah, Steve, don’t do this to me again.”

 

“You called me Steve.” Barnes almost jumped out of his skin. He squeezed Steve’s shoulder lightly.

 

“I guess I did. You make it real hard to stay mad at you sometimes.” Steve didn’t look at him and Barnes a pang of something he couldn’t identify. Guilt? No, he’d recognise it. It wasn’t nice, whatever it was. It burned like a poison, and it’d go away if Steve’d just look at him.

 

“You said you hated me Buck.” He whispered. His shoulders drooped, his hands open and empty and his back bent like he was collapsing in on himself. Maybe he was. Barnes sat down next to him, back against the concrete wall.

 

“I don’t.” He stared at the back wall as he said it, half certain he was lying.

 

“You said you hated me. I can hear it going round and round, over and over in my head, but you’ve never said that to me.” Steve scrubbed at his eyes and shivered. “I think it’s a nightmare. We’re in a room I’ve never been in, and you look different. Your hair is long, and you’ve got this,” He rubbed one hand over his left shoulder. “This arm…”

 

Barnes started. An icy tendril of fear wound its way through him.

 

“Of course I look different. Bucky died falling off a train in 1944. I’m not him. I thought the whole beating you half to death on the helicarrier would’ve clued you in.” Steve’s palms dug harder into his face.

 

“What are you talking about? You never fell off a train, and you never laid a finger on me, let alone a hand. And what’s a helicarrier?”

 

Barnes swung around so he was kneeling beside him. Steve was shaking, and the tendons in his hands were stark and straining under his skin.

 

“Look at me.” Barnes ordered. Steve didn’t move, his hands covering his face. “I said, look at me.” He reached out to grab Steve’s hand away. Steve was faster. He lashed out, one hand grabbing Barnes’ wrist and twisting it away. If it’d been bone it would have shattered instantly. The other hand swung wild. Steve’s fist slammed into Barnes ribs. He sprawled backwards, hitting the opposite wall hard.

 

Barnes sucked in as much air as his abused diaphragm would let him, blinking stars from his vision. It tunnelled in front of him and black kept into the corners of his eyes. He’d not taken a direct hit from Steve before, especially not in such a vulnerable area. It hurt more than he’d expected. He might have blacked out if he hadn’t heard Steve give a keening whimper from the other side of the room.

 

Steve’s hands had moved from his eyes to his temples, winding around his head like he was trying to crush his own skull. He was still as stone, every muscle taut, every tendon pulled tight as a bowstring.

 

For a long moment, the night was silent apart from Barnes wheezing gasps.

 

“Don’t touch me. They’re here.” Steve whispered. Barnes looked around, towards the door. He couldn’t see any shadows blocking the light or hear any footsteps.

 

“No they’re not. Just you and me.” Barnes forced himself to his hands and knees. Steve shook his head jerkily, the motion hampered by his stiff, locked joints.

 

“You don’t understand.” With a herculean effort, Steve lifted a hand from his face and pointed to his temple. “They’re in here.” And for the first time that night, he met Barnes gaze.

 

His eyes were so pale they were almost white, even his pupils. As Barnes watched, a blue pulse raced across the cloudy iris. He thought back to the previous night, and how he’d been sure there was something in Steve’s eye then. Whatever it was, it’d spread.

 

In his head, Barnes could see the tunnel full of doors again, and the brainwashed prisoners. They reached and they scrabbled and they clawed and

_“Are you blue too? We’re all blue, we’re blue we’re blue, we’re blue and then we are RED.”_

 

Oh God, _no._

 

“Steve, you have to fight them.” He said urgently. “Whatever they’re doing, whatever they’re saying, don’t listen.” He wrapped an arm around his aching ribs and stepped to Steve’s side, crouching next to him.

 

“I can hear them. They’re going to make me kill people, and they keep listing these names, telling me they’re my friends and I don’t know any of ‘em. There’s a Stark, but it’s not Howard. I swear, I never heard of Doctor Banner, he’s not with the SSR; they’ve taken something already and I don’t know what it is, I don’t know who they are!” Steve’s hands flew to his head, his fingers digging into his scalp.

 

“I know, I know. Don’t listen; they can’t make you do anything. I got you out. You’re going to be fine.” Barnes told him.

 

“But I’m not.” Steve sounded wrecked. “I’m out, but they’re still in here,” His fingers tightened in his hair. He was nearly pulling it out. “It’s too late. I can’t get them out and I don’t know what they’re taking away.”

 

“Look, uh.” Barnes vainly tried to think of any technique that could resist Hydra’s brainwashing. He’d never been able to. If he had, they’d eventually taken that memory away too. “Just, I don’t know, find a memory to hold onto. Something important. Focus, find something they can’t take.”

 

“I don’t know how. Every time I try and think of something to remember, it gets taken away.” Steve said. He frowned for a moment, “Did I ever know a girl called Peggy?”

 

The air went out of Barnes lungs faster than when Steve hit him.

 

“Of course you knew Peggy. You have to remember her. She… she was-” What was she? Barnes tried to think of her, but all he got was a fleeting impression of brown hair and red. Lipstick maybe? She hovered on the fringe of his memory, out of reach, like everything that wasn’t Steve.

 

“I can’t see her. I can hear someone called her name, but I can’t picture her face.” Steve said.

 

“Then find something else. Come on, you can’t let them do this to you. You’re stronger than they are; stronger than I was. You can’t give up. You don’t give up. I know you. You have to fight this.”

 

“I don’t know how,” Steve replied. He glanced up at Barnes, his eyes desperate. “Help me.”

 

Barnes panicked. Help? How? He had nothing to draw on, no memories of comforting or cheering someone. He was utterly useless. Maybe there was a way though.

 

He tried to summon every bit of Bucky he could remember to the front of his mind. Nothing happened. The little voice at the back of his mind never used to shut up was stubbornly silent. There were words he should be saying, things he should know how to do but he didn’t have a clue what they were.

 

“I would if I could. If I could reach in your head and pull Hydra out, I’d do it. I swear I’d slaughter every last one of them that even thought of hurting you.” He winced internally. It wasn’t what Bucky would have said.

 

Steve loosened up, the white knuckle tension draining from him a little. Barnes could feel his blood thundering in his ears.

 

“I know you would.” He gave Barnes a wobbly smile. “You’re brave, stubborn and you’ve saved me so many times. You’re a good man. Best I’ve ever known. I’ve been holding onto that.” Barnes felt what was coming more than he saw it.

 

“Damn it, Steve, don’t you dare!” Barnes yelled, but it was too late.

 

The brightness in Steve’s eyes flared electric blue, swallowing all other colour, before it dimming and dying out. Steve crumpled, collapsing like a marionette with its strings slashed. Barnes caught him with one arm as he pitched forward.

 

“Steve, don’t you dare let them win. Wake. Up.” He demanded. He held Steve’s head in one hand, holding his body up with the other. He gave Steve a light shake. “Wake up.” He ordered. Steve’s head lolled in his grasp. “Steve!” He shook him harder. Steve’s arms fell limp at his sides, fingers curled loosely on the dusty floor. “Steve, please.”

 

The still night was his only answer, and something in his chest was breaking. He put on hand on Steve’s neck, searching for a pulse. His finger shifted around and panicked gripped him.

 

He felt a heartbeat. It was thready and weak, but it was there.

 

His grip loosened as relief washed through him. Steve slipped forward into his chest, his head landing on Barnes shoulder. Barnes didn’t even think before wrapping his arms around Steve. A vague memory pushed its way through his head, another embrace in another time, with another Steve, but still sad. He squeezed his eyes shut against it and put his chin on Steve’s shoulder. A wet streak appeared on one of his cheeks. He had failed completely. Heartbeat or not, Hydra had done what they set out to do. Everything that made Steve what he was was utterly destroyed.

 

“I hate you.” He lied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is late because my hard drive fried, so I had to rewrite it, which took more time than I anticipated. Sorry guys, and to everyone reading through this and sticking with it, thanks for your patience.
> 
> On that note, I have to announce a months hiatus. I'm going to visit friends with no wi-fi for a month, but I'll be back in commission by the end of July. 
> 
> As usual, any comments would be appreciated, and see you in a month!


	8. Chapter 8

“I can’t stay.” Tony blurted out into the stale air of Doc Leibovic’s Barbers, Surgery and Dentistry.

 

Natasha raised her eyebrows. Tony had been looking restless for the last hour, eyes darting around the waiting room and his fingers drumming an erratic tattoo on his thigh. He’d lasted longer than she’d expected.

 

“When Clint’s Tahiti party bus gets here, I’m leaving.” His eyes were fixed on the floor now, like he couldn’t bear to look through the grimy window at their newly fixed up companions.

 

Clint had taken to his crutches with palpable distaste. The look of sheer loathing he aimed at them had Sam in fits of laughter. He’d taken to his crutches far more gracefully. He even goaded Clint into a race. Natasha felt some of the worry pooling in her gut fade at Clint’s outraged face as Sam swiftly outpaced him around the little room. Tony tore his gaze from the floor and looked over to her, sighing miserably. He probably wanted her to say something. God forbid he not be the centre of attention for five minutes. She rolled her eyes.

 

“I’d say you don’t need to be so dramatic, but this is _you_ I’m talking about.” She said.

 

“Hey!” Tony protested. Natasha glared at him until he shrugged. “Fine, point taken. But really, you’re not mad that I’m, you know, abandoning you?”

 

“Well, I could really have used your years of training in espionage, extensive knowledge of the local area and your brilliant unarmed combat skills, but somehow, I think I’ll get by without you.” She deadpanned. Tony narrowed his eyes at her.

 

“If this were anywhere else, I’d say it was on. Seriously, that’s practically a dare, and you’ve worked for me, you’ve seen how well daring me to do stuff works out. This time, I can’t. Even if I had the armour and I could back you up properly, I wouldn’t do it.” He ran a hand through his hair, his face twisted into a grimace.

 

“You’re worried about the fighting.” She recognised the dangers. Apparently they weren’t lost on Tony either.

 

“It’s getting worse. When we first got here, there were protests, some fights, a little international outrage. It’s escalated, and I can’t afford to be caught up in any of it. One picture, one shaky cam cell phone video and that’s it, game over. If the world sees Iron Man blowing things up in a war zone with no explanation, it won’t matter how many press releases I do; no one would buy that I’m here fighting HYDRA. Why would they? They know damn well there are still plenty of stragglers left in America. We could tell them why we were here, but what are they going to believe; that I’m here because HYDRA kidnapped Captain America, who was in the country illegally by the way, and that we came to rescue him? Or that I’m here dealing weapons under the table. One of those is far more believable than the other. It could destroy everything I’ve worked to build, and it’d destroy Pepper too. It’s a risk I can’t take.”

 

“Okay.” She leant back in her chair, stretching her shoulders. Through the window Clint and Sam looked like they were jousting.

 

“Okay?” Tony didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t seem like she was about to kill him. He sat back as well, his chair groaning ominously under him as he shifted. “Okay.” He looked over to the window in time to see Sam take a crutch to the ribs and collapse out of the frame theatrically, one hand appearing above the sill to claw at the air whilst Clint crowed above him in triumph. The doctor shouted something foreign and vaguely threatening sounding at them, though the glass muffled the sound too much to make out what it was. Clint turned and replied with something and the old man laughed.

 

“You’ll be okay alone.” Tony said. It was a question cleverly disguised as a statement.

 

“You know who you’re talking to?” She said archly. “Besides, who said I’d be alone? The bus is dropping off an old friend of mine.” Tony looked vaguely terrified at the thought. Natasha’s hand flitted to her throat, where her radio was tucked under the collar of her jacket.

 

“I’m going to contact Barnes. The sooner we have a co-ordinated plan, the better.” She said, standing and heading toward the door. “You’re sure about the potential extraction points?” Tony had spent the three hours it’d taken to patch up Clint and Sam looking for good spots to fly in and scoop up their fugitive friends. Tony waved her off.

 

“You know who you’re talking to?” He parroted. Natasha walked out, shaking her head. Tony smirked, slouching back in the chair. It squeaked, splintered, and finally, dumped his ass on the floor.

 

\--(X)--

 

The morning sunlight filtered through the trees, casting a pale pleasant glow on the grasses and ground. Vines grew and knotted around abandoned houses, bricks and mortar being throttled back to dust and earth, tarmac ripped apart by dainty, flowering weeds, blowing innocently in the breeze.

 

It was exactly the kind of quiet that put Barnes on edge. No planes flew overhead and he couldn’t hear the soft shuffle of animals or the chirp of birds. If it wasn’t for the rustle of leaves and the tinny, insistent static in his ear from the radio, he might have though he was going deaf.

 

He scanned the area for any unnatural activity. The bunker across the street kept drawing his eye, but he tried not to focus on it. There wouldn’t be any movement coming from there.

 

“Black Widow to Soldier. Please acknowledge.”

 

He jerked forward. Her voice broke the silence so suddenly he nearly fell out of the tree he was settled in. He shook himself a little, surprised by the reaction.

 

“I’m here.” He’d said, hushed. No, that wasn’t right. “Acknowledged.” He amended. There was a small hum from Natasha on the other side of the line.

 

“What’s your status?” She asked. How’s Steve? He heard. How was he going to explain what had happened? How could he tell them HYDRA had won and Steve was gone? The words stuck in his throat.

 

“We’re currently underground. The Captain- Rogers is…” he floundered.

 

“Did something happen? Did Hydra catch up to you?” Natasha interrupted. Her voice was composed, but he could hear a note of panic in it.

 

“He’s alive.” Barnes blurted. “He’s with me, I’m keeping him safe.  It’s just… He’s asleep. I can’t wake him up.” He held his scavenged rifle so tight his knuckles were white. He forced himself to loosen his grip.

 

“Is he hurt?” Her voice was lower now.

 

“No, he’s physically fine. It might be something they dosed him with – could’ve knocked him out when he got it out of his system.” He shammed.

 

“Okay. We’ll deal with it. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.” She was firm now, focused. “Right now, we’re trying to organise the best way to evacuate you. We’ve got a few locations scouted, Stark’s work. Do you know the area you’ve gone to ground in?”

 

“Well enough. I won’t get lost.” He replied. Natasha reeled off five locations.

 

“Can you make it to any of those?” She asked. He ran through the list, calculating distances and working out which had the easiest terrain to navigate.

 

“The last one, the railway station.” He chose. “Yaniv.”

 

“Okay. The main station is sometimes in use, but for the most part, the whole place is abandoned. There are plenty of satellite buildings around the station, so pick one and stay low. I’ll be there in three days, for Rogers. If you want to come with us, the offer is open.”

 

“I won’t.” Barnes said quickly. Natasha sighed and he wondered what her expression was. Disappointment? Frustration? Relief?

 

“It’s an offer, not an order. It remains open unless you do something to make us retract it.” She paused, changing tack. “I’ve been there, afraid to come in from the cold, afraid your hands are so stained they’ll never be clean again.” The words were hesitant, spoken in low, soft tones, exposing a vulnerability. “I wouldn’t have survived this long if I hadn’t taken a chance and trusted someone to help me.” He knew if she were stood in front of him she’d be leant towards him, her eyes wide and expression earnest. Who wouldn’t believe her every word? She was brilliant.

 

“I’ve met people like you before. You talk, you flatter and you lie and people fall at your feet. Not me. You take Steve when you get to Yaniv, and you-” What? Help him? There’s no way to get him back. He’s gone. “Leave… Leave me alone.”

 

“You don’t have to face your past alone, or your future. I know what it’s like to be-”

 

“You don’t know me.” He growled. “And don’t pretend you’re doing this for anyone other than Rogers. That’s him talking, not you.”

 

“You’re damn right it’s him. If you crossed me, I’d put a bullet through your skull rather than save you, but it’s not my call.” Natasha snapped. “A friend of mine thinks you were worth saving. He believes in you, and I believe in him. Sam wants you safe too. He tells me you’ve got big aspirations. The Avengers are many things, but most of us can’t say we’re good people. It’s a noble ambition. It’s one more reason I’m giving you a choice.”

 

“It doesn’t matter because I’m saying no. It’s not a choice if I’m not allowed to say no.” he countered. For a moment, she said nothing, her presence only marked by the gentle breaths caught in her microphone.

 

“Have it your way.” She sighed. “See you at Yaniv. Romanov out.” He shifted on the branch again, wriggling his toes to get the blood flow back in them. His heart was pumping hard. It didn’t seem real. He’d said no to something. Even if it was an offer of shelter, it was still something he didn’t have to blindly agree too, and he hadn’t. The Winter Soldier would have agreed. The Winter Soldier was efficiency and cold calculation, and an offer of help and security wasn’t something to be blithely thrown away when he didn’t have anything else.

 

It felt like a step in the right direction. Any time he didn’t feel like the Soldier was. When he’d gone to Steve’s apartment for his file, he’d meant to be in and out without leaving a trace. He’d been halfway out of the fire escape when his metal fingers knocked some ornament off of Steve’s windowsill. It was like a spell was broken as it was shattered on the floor. He’d left a mark. He wasn’t the Soldier anymore. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t HYDRA, he wasn’t anyone’s property and he wasn’t _Bucky_. He’d trashed Steve’s place in minutes, tearing, smashing and throwing everything in reach. He’d only stopped when he stabbed the kitchen knife into the countertop with his message. It seemed the natural end to his whirlwind of destruction. He’d been breathing hard by the end of it, and he could feel the blood singing in his veins, hot and angry. He felt alive.

 

His eyes trailed over his surroundings idly. Yaniv wasn’t far. The village they were in was barely a few miles from the tracks, which would be easy enough to follow. He could be there in three days easily, even dragging Steve. Then it’d be over. He’d be completely free. He could do whatever he wanted, be whoever he wanted.

 

The first thing he’d do was sleep. He felt the weight of a week of being constantly on guard, sleeping with one eye open. It was starting to settle in his bones, heavy and distracting.

 

The second thing he’d do was figure out a name. He’d been thinking of himself as Barnes, a common enough name. He didn’t feel like a James, and though he was starting to recognise the parts of himself that were Bucky, he’d never be that person again. Maybe somewhere in the middle? He could be Jack easily enough. No one would look twice at Jack Barnes.

 

A noise broke him from his thoughts. He snapped back to reality and he cursed himself for being so inattentive. Had been snuck up on? Was it HYDRA? He scanned the edge of the area, buildings and treelines and long grass.

 

For a second he held his breath, wondering if it’d been a trick of the light. No, there it was again. A shadow, definitely human. The sun was high, but he could make out the silhouette, and the shape of a gun. There was a man hiding around the corner of one of the buildings, maybe more than one.

 

How loud had he been talking to the Widow? He’d though it was quiet enough, but everything here was quiet. He watched the shadow closely. Its owner wasn’t close to the wall, hugging the corner. Anyone hunting the Winter Soldier would be more cautious. He relaxed minutely. Perhaps it wasn’t even HYDRA. People did still live in the area, hermits and outcasts. It could be someone looking to escape the strains between the Russian and the Ukrainians. It could be completely fine. It didn’t feel like the right answer though.

 

The shadow moved and he held his breath. Two men crept warily around the corner, guns held ready. They were dressed head to toe in black, with dark helmets and goggles. He let out the breath slowly. They were definitely HYDRA. They were guarded, but they weren’t walking like they were expecting to be ambushed. Like most people, they weren’t looking at anything above their own eye line. They were shoddily trained.

 

He kept still. They could walk right past, and keep looking, report the area secure and it’d be over.

 

“I think I found something!” A third man called out. Barnes blood froze in his veins as the two men turned in the direction of the bunker. Inside it, Steve slept on. They kept their weapons up, edging past Barnes tree and towards the entrance. Their companion was at the door, hovering. How had he missed a third man? He wasn’t that sloppy yet, surely.

 

He let the two men pass, waiting until they were halfway across the street before he acted. The soldiers went down wordlessly, the tranquil noon air pierced by two gunshots. He adjusted his aim to find the third man shouting into a radio. He dropped to the ground with a bullet through his chest a second later. Barnes dropped down from his vantage point, hurrying to the dead man and grabbing his radio. On the other side f the line, there were voices shouting.

 

“Strike team 19 down, we have a confirmed sighting!” A harried sounding voice yelled. There were low whispers in the background. It sounded like an angry hornets nest.

 

“Send everyone in the area, 6, 7, 15, 19, 24 and 26. Converge on their location now!” A gruffer voice cut through the noise.

 

“Acknowledged. Hail HYDRA!” Chorused the radio euphorically. Barnes switched it off after the third round of hails, clipping it to his belt. The village went quiet again. All he could hear was his heart pounding in his chest.

 

They were coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi folks, I'm back. I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I'll be updating again soon.
> 
> I'd like to thank everyone reading this. Whilst I was away I had some absolutely splendid feedback. I feel truly privileged to have such wonderful readers and commenters. I'd especially like to thank reathe_froge - I can't describe how much it meant to read such a thoughtful and thorough review. It's everything I hope for as a writer.
> 
> Cheers again, til next time!


	9. Chapter 9

Barnes slumped onto the concrete floor of the bunker. Next to him, Steve lay on one of the ancient, creaky camp beds. Barnes watched him out of the corner of his eye for a while. He didn’t move except for the steady rhythm of his breath. His eyes didn’t move behind their lids. He wasn’t even dreaming.

 

Every moment he lingered the enemy could be closing in. The bunker was a rat trap he couldn’t afford to get caught in but a building across the street had a good vantage point. He stashed his rifle up there earlier. He’d make his stand there, but not yet. He needed this moment before he faced HYDRA again.

 

“Hey Steve.” He started. The words hung in the air, useless and unanswered. “I don’t know how long we’ve got. HYDRA’s coming soon, and I have to go fight them. It’s a part of this new thing I’m trying out. I told your friend I’m trying to be a good person, do the right thing. Sounds familiar right? First choice I make for myself and it’s you all over. Can’t seem to shake the idea though.” He crossed his arms, shifting on the balls of his feet. “This trying to be a hero business sure sinks its claws in quick, doesn’t it? All of a sudden I’ve got an obligation and responsibilities, and I’m trying to protect you. I’m not even sure if there’s anything left to save.”

 

Barnes stopped a moment, listening. The long grass rustled outside, but he couldn’t hear footsteps; just the wind picking up. He turned back to Steve. “Maybe I’m dumb for doing it. _I_ think I’m dumb for doing it. But Steve, I got this memory. It’s hazy, but it’s there, and it’s _mine_ , and it feels so damned important. We said ‘ _to the end of the line_ ’ _._ I remember now. I don’t know if the end of the line has already happened for you. Maybe I already kept my promise. But I’m not at the end of my line yet, and while there is still a chance in hell of me getting you to the Avengers so they can science or magic or whatever you back to being yourself, then whatever I got left of my line is going to be spent making that happen. Because that promise saved us both once and I’m going to honour it, for you. And for the man I used to be. I’m not him but I can do right by his memories.”

 

He stopped again, listening. Nothing.

 

“One more thing. If we get out of this, I don’t know what I’m going to do, or where I’m going to go. I’m not going with you though. Some lines don’t run together forever and that’s ok. When I’ve got myself together, and I know who I am – when I’ve got a favourite colour or food, or a memory that makes me smile that’s not from last century; I’ll come see you. I know you now. I need to get to know me too.” He reached down and squeezed Steve’s shoulder, letting his hand linger there for a second.

 

Then he turned on his heel and left without looking back.

 

\--(X)-- _20 Minutes Later_

 

Barnes dusted off his hands, the three bodies from before piled behind a rusty metal rack. The building must have been a shop once, but time had turned it a ruin, perfect for a ghost. It had a panoramic view of the two houses across the street, and the bunker which lay in the middle of them, hidden by long grass and the dirt and bushes he’d dragged over the doors to try and camouflage them. 

 

The crunch of footsteps on broken gravel startled him after the near silence. They were here. HYDRA had found them. His heart stopped for a moment before an icy calm descended on him.

 

He ghosted upstairs, quiet even on the old, rotten floorboards. Peering over the first windowsill, he watched the soldiers. It looked like a few different Strike teams, moving in two and threes. They congregated close to his position, where the road through the village bent as the houses ended. He counted fourteen of them. He had ten bullets. He couldn’t afford to miss. He flexed his fingers, remembering the feel of the test shot he’d taken with the scavenged gun. It pulled to the right. He’d have to remember that.

 

One of the soldiers took command. He stood taller than the others and pointed at the various ruined structures in the village. The strike teams began to separate as Barnes lined up his shot. He took a breath and held it as he pulled the trigger and a man went down.

 

It wasn’t the man he’d been aiming for. One of the strike team soldiers had gotten in the way. Barnes cursed under his breath, lining up the next shot as the troops scattered, scrambling into cover. The commander disappeared, but Barnes’ work was done. They panicked. Three of the soldiers hadn’t been able to tell where his shot had come from and hid in his line of fire. They went down quickly, but the other soldiers extrapolated his position. Bullets started to chip away at the masonry of his hideout.

 

He held out, waiting for the right shots. One man ducked out of cover for a moment and went down with a bullet through the throat. Barnes breathed slow and steady. He had to wait them out. Another dashed towards the front of the house to the right of the bunker. He hit the door with a dull thud, leaving a smear of blood on the wood as he slid to the floor. Eight more to go. Four more bullets.

 

He ducked as one bullet came too close. He felt something sting his cheek, a ribbon of blood leaking from the cut onto his collar. He reloaded, moving to the next window. A soldier wavered in and out of his line of sight. He watched down the sights of the rifle, patient and relaxed despite the adrenaline thrumming through his body.

 

He blinked and Belarus vanished.

_He held a different rifle in two flesh and blood hands. The stock felt icy under his left palm. He lay prone in the middle of a forest overlooking a burnt out factory. Captain America stepped into his sights. His mission? But, his arm wasn’t… the vision moved without him, swimming in front of him as the sight rose to zero in on a black clad soldier, so similar to the ones he’d been facing moments ago. The trigger felt firm under his grip as he fired. The man ragdolled. Captain America saluted him._

 

A bullet ricocheted off of his metal arm and Belarus snapped back. Barnes lurched to one side and into cover, pressing his flesh hand to his head. He mashed the palm hard against his eye and bit back a frustrated cry. A window pane burst over his shoulder, glass showering him. He slammed his metal hand into the floor, bumping his head back against the stone wall. Damn his memories! He couldn’t deal with them now!

 

He rolled back to the window, searching for his target. The soldier had vanished. His stomach dropped. How long had he been distracted?

 

His hands remained steady, but his palm began to sweat. He swept the street. Two soldiers sprinted for the entrance to his nest. He shot them as they ran. A third fired scattershot from behind the tree he’d been perched in earlier and he threw himself out of the way. The bullets smashed through the glass, peppering the far wall. He crawled back to the first window, found a target and squeezed the trigger.

 

_Thunk!_

 

The gun jammed. He hit the stock with his metal hand, aimed and fired. Nothing. He ditched the rifle with a muttered curse, ducking as his lapse made the soldiers bolder.

 

He grabbed the rusted knife from the bunker and hurled it out of the window. He heard rather than saw the man go down, a muffled scream drowned out by gunfire. He drew one of his own knives, with a long serrated black blade.

 

Before he could make a move, the door to the room flew open and two more soldiers fired from the frame. Barnes threw himself sideways into a roll. The floor fractured under the sudden strain and his direction changed. He tumbled down through the broken boards.

 

He landed on the bodies he’d left on the shop floor. His hissed out a pained breath as he rolled off the corpses, their body armour as unforgiving as the floor tiles. Machine gun fire shattering the window and tearing through the old racks like paper. He ducked into a back room, hiding in the darkness under the stairs. The men who’d ambushed him upstairs descended.

 

He held his breath. They moved cautiously, taking slow steps to try and keep quiet. The gun fire from outside got closer.

 

“We should tell them to stop shooting. What if they hit us?” One of the men whispered. The stair creaked underneath him.

 

“What if they don’t hit it? Haven’t you heard about what the Soldier can do? It gives me chills just thinking about it.” The other man wasn’t as careful. He hopped the creaking stair, almost breaking the tread of the next one down. Barnes waited.

 

“Is it really a ghost? How do you kill something that’s already dead?” The gunfire started to tail off.

 

“Don’t be an idiot. Ghosts don’t exist.” The second man shoved the first down another step.

 

Barnes struck, slashing at their legs through the slats. The two men fell, one in shock and pain, the other because his Achilles tendons had been ripped in two. Barnes stabbed the first in the heart, through the seams in his armour, the man dying with a bloody gurgle. The second tried to crawl away on his elbows. Barnes grabbed one of their guns and shot him, the blood spatter soaking the cuffs of his pants.

 

He went out the back door, circling around the shop. There should be two more. Only two more. He ran around the corner and into the street. Both soldiers leapt up and shot at him. One of the bullets hit his metal arm, another grazed his hip. He fired back as he ran, gunning one down and skidding around the corner of the building across the street, out of the line of fire.

 

He slid to a stop at the feet of another soldier. Barnes blinked at him in surprise, elbowed him in the gut, grabbed hold of his throat with his metal arm and squeezed, hurling the man backwards as he crushed his trachea.

 

There were more than he’d thought. They must have gotten there after he’d left the cover of the shop. He didn’t have time to check how much ammo remained in the gun he’d stolen. It would have to be enough. The footsteps came closer, heavy boots on spent shell casings. His throat went dry and his knife weighed heavily on his hip. He could feel his heart pounding against his ribs. He tucked himself close to the wall, waiting for the soldiers to come around the corner. He didn’t see the men coming at him from behind.

 

One moment he stood by the wall and the next he hauled up, swung around by the back of his jacket and slammed into the ground. Someone stomped on his hand and he gripped the gun tighter, trying to turn it on his assailant. The next kick caught his wrist and his hand spasmed. The gun was wrenched out of his hand. The boot pushed harder on the delicate bones in his wrist. Barnes grabbed at the mans’ ankle, caught it in his metal hand and squeezed. The boot vanished.

 

He rolled away as a it came down again, this time aimed his face. He jumped up, reaching for his knife and swinging at empty air. He looked up, trying to find an opening, an escape, anything. He found himself facing three soldiers, lined up in front of him like a firing squad.

 

Two started to circle him, slow movements, like they were trying not to startle a wild animal. The other stooped to pick up his fallen blade, waving it out of his reach. He froze, mind desperately trying to think of something, some action that wouldn’t end up with him getting killed. His metal arm hummed as he clenched his fists. He could do this. He was… He wasn’t a weapon.

 

Before he could move, something jabbed him in the ribs and his body locked up. He wrenched his head down, seeing the sharp crackling end of a stun baton. He twisted away, every muscle in his body screaming. The three soldiers circled him like vultures. He drew back his metal fist, but another soldier stepped in, lightning quick. The stun baton hit him beneath the sternum. He gasped, the shock going straight to his chest. He couldn’t breathe. The soldier held it there, driving it hard into his torso. He jerked, his body flailing with the volts being pushed into it. It didn’t stop. His lungs burned, but he couldn’t get them to work. The world started to darken at the edges. When he thought he’d pass out, it stopped and he fell to one knee, sucking in air. His metal hand clawed furrows in the ground and he bent over, white sparks flickering across his vision.

 

“We should kill the bastard.” One of the soldiers spat.

 

“I wouldn’t. Commander Nikols said alive if possible. He could have information.” One of the others replied.

 

“Information? He killed Sergei and Alex back there! I don’t care what he knows.” The first soldier stepped forward, pistol drawn. Barnes saw the barrel hovering a few inches in front of his face, but he didn’t move. He wasn’t sure if he could.

 

“It won’t bring them back.” The second soldier pulled the first back, a hand on his shoulder.

 

“I know. Seeing this traitor dead on the dirt would make me feel a lot better though.” The barrel of the pistol loomed in front of him again and he twisted his head away. The soldier grabbed Barnes by the chin and lifted his head up. Barnes blinked up at him, his mouth a thin, determined line. The soldier pressed the pistol into Barnes eye. Barnes fought to keep himself from trembling.

 

The soldier pressed harder. Barnes felt like his eyeball would burst.

 

“Stop that. You can do what you want with him later.” The third soldier stepped forward this time, wrenching the gun away. Barnes pitched backward, but he didn’t fall. The third soldier caught him by the collar of his shirt and held him up. “For now, we take him to the Commander.”

 

The world exploded into pain again as the third man pistol whipped him. Barnes fell sideways, stunned. Hands grabbed hold of his arms and zip tied his hands together, three plastic rings cutting into his flesh wrist. He could feel his hand throbbing already. One of them lifted him up again, and let go so he landed face first in the dirt. He bit his cheek and tasted copper. He had to keep breathing. Stay alert. Stay awake. This wasn’t the end.

 

They pulled him up again, and he met the gaze of expressionless mask on one of the soldiers face, scowling with as much venom as he could. The soldier scoffed at him, smashed his stun baton into Barnes neck and everything went black.

 

\--(X)--

 

_The Stark Expo sure looked incredible. Fireproof suits, appliances that looked like they’d send you to the moon rather than help around the house and was that an actual flying car?!_

_The girl on his arm pulls on the sleeve of his uniform, dragging him towards the display whilst her friend rattles along behind them, a self-imposed third wheel on a double date. It’ll get better when they go dancing, Bucky tells himself. The car falls to the ground and the girls laugh. The friend will warm up to Steve when they… He turns around, but Steve’s not there._

_His heart drops, and the lights around him drop too. His dame walks off with his arm._

_“What? Hey!” the crowd has vanished like they were never there. “Hello? Anybody?”_

_He’s alone in the dark, and it starts to get cold. He wraps his one arm around his torso, but when he looks, it’s white, frozen stiff. He cries out and it echoes in the emptiness. His breath comes out like a cloud._

_“Hey!” He starts walking, but it’s like wading through a swamp, each step achingly slow and difficult. “Anybody there? Come on!” He clutches his arm around his ribs harder, like he can warm it up, but the ice is spreading down the front of his blue Howling Commando uniform._

_He walks until he can’t, his feet frozen in place. The air burns his lungs it’s so cold. The ice creeps to the collar of his uniform and onto his skin. “Help.” He gasps._

_Then, in front of him there’s a light. It’s stark and pale against the black. He wishes he could reach out for it._

_He can’t move, but somehow it gets closer, brighter, and he feels a rush of hope until he realises what it is. Ice creeps up his chin as he looks out the little window of his cryotube. He wrenches his arm out, banging as hard as he can on the metal._

_“HELP ME!” The scream is painful and the ice crawls up his cheeks and around his lips. It’s nearly at his eyes when a face appears outside the window and it’s Steve. He’s wearing red, white and blue, and Bucky wants to cry with relief. Steve looks at him, fear and hope and determination in his face and for a moment Bucky can believe everything will be okay._

_There’s a muffled thud, and a stabbing pain. He looks down at himself, and there’s a hole in his abdomen. There’s a hole in the tube. He looks out the window and Steve’s face is drawn in astonishment. There’s a hole in Steve too, and he slumps out of sight. His last expression is disbelief. Bucky snarls with rage and looks into the killers eyes._

_It’s Steve again, expression blank. This time, he’s wearing the uniform of the Winter Soldier, black leather and armour. His face is masked, muzzled, and all Bucky can see are his cold eyes, crackling with electric blue._

_He screams as the ice climbs down his throat._

\--(X)--

 

“This one seems to be more legend than fact.” Barnes felt a boot nudging his cheek. It retracted, leaving the mud and grit from the sole. He didn’t open his eyes.

 

“So can I kill him?”

 

“Not yet. We need to know where he’s hidden the other one. We can search, yes, and it won’t take long to find Subject 162, but it will go quicker if we know where to look.” The boot nudged his face again. “Don’t you think so, Winter Soldier? I know you are awake.”

 

Barnes opened his eyes, blinking in the bright sunlight. He lay on the ground in front of the shop. The commander stood over him, his mask discarded and his face twisted into an expression of fake geniality.

 

“Go fuck yourself.” Barnes spat. His hand ached from the lack of circulation. One of the soldiers raised his gun, but the commander waved him off.

 

“Surely you don’t want to make this worse for yourself? There are but five buildings worth the title in this village. Even the most thorough search, with the three men you’ve left me, why, it would take an hour, two at most. We will find 162, Soldier. If you tell us where it is, you don’t need to die. Prove your worth, and we can help you. It will be as though none of this ever happened. You never need to feel afraid, or conflicted ever again.” The commander smiled.

 

“I said: Go. Fuck. Yourself.” Barnes grinned savagely, baring his blood stained teeth. The commander tutted and directed two of the soldiers to search the area. They went into the house opposite the shop; one of the ones flanking the bunker. Barnes didn’t flinch as they started their search, but cold dread pooled in the pit of his stomach.

 

“It is a pity you choose death. If you are so attached to 162, we could make it so you would be partners. You could, train together, have missions together. Would this not persuade you?”

 

“I don’t know how much clearer I can make this. No. Never. Not in a million years. Screw you. You got nothing to offer me.”

 

“Not even to save your friend?” The commander swept a hand at the remaining soldier and he wandered towards the other house flanking the bunker.

 

“You can’t save anyone. HYDRA only destroys.” Barnes snapped. The commander shook his head.

 

“You are very disappointing in person. They talked about you a great deal in the briefing. Beware the Soldier, he is relentless, an unstoppable weapon, a killing machine. They talk of you like you are a force of nature.” The commander put his boot on Barnes neck, applying a little pressure. “Yet here you are. Weak, defenceless, sentimental. Yes, I am most disappointed. Let me tell you what HYDRA has done, and what it can do.”

 

“I know what it does. It kills and it schemes and it plots, and in the end, it never wins.” Barnes gasped as the boot pressed harder.

 

“Never wins? We have been winning for a century, with your help, might I add. We are still winning. America is a blip on our radar. But that is not what I meant to say to you. I was going to tell you about the new mind reprogramming procedures. With the staff, it is much more stable. The memories stick as though they were real. You and 162 could be whatever you wanted to be. Brothers, lovers – how about a 162 who was completely submissive to you? Or you to him? As long as you serve HYDRA, whatever you want from 162 could be yours.” The commander offered.

 

“I don’t want anything from him and we will never serve you.” Barnes hissed.

 

“You have rejected our offer of life for yourself, but you do not speak for 162.” The commander pressed harder.

 

“His name is Steve.” Barnes choked. The commander frowned at him.

 

“No it isn’t. If there ever was a man inside 162, he is dead. He is a meat suit, a puppet, a pawn. Pawns have no need of titles or names. You don’t have one.”

 

“I do! My name is Bu-" The Commander shoved down on his throat, cutting him off. He took the boot away and kicked Barnes onto his side.

 

“Silence! You are no one. You are nothing. You are a weapon, a faulty tool to be disposed of and that is all!” The commander yelled. He kicked Barnes in the ribs, steel toed capped boots thudding onto unarmoured body. Barnes curled up on himself and the commander stamped on his metal arm. Barnes winced as he heard the metal plates grind together. “You!” The commander stomped on his metal shoulder. “Are!” The boot hit his side. “NOTHING!”

 

A single gunshot rang out. Blood splattered Barnes’ face. The commanders’ body tumbled forward and he rolled aside to keep from getting squashed. He blinked uncomprehendingly at the corpse for a second, brow pinched together. What the..?

 

“Hey, are you alright?” Hands grabbed hold of his shoulders and he turned over. A second later his hands slipped free and he bit back a whimper as the circulation returned. He closed his eyes as he pushed himself out of the dirt, his arms wobbling with the effort. The hands on his shoulders didn’t leave. They helped guide him as he sat up, letting go once he got his balance. “I got the others, he was the last one. Sorry I took so long. You looked like you were really taking a beating.” Barnes opened his eyes and there was Steve, his eyes wide and worried. Of course.

 

“It’s fine.” Barnes winced as he forced himself to his feet. He stumbled when he tried to straighten up, his bruised ribs protesting the movement. “I’ll be fine.” Steve looked him over, taking a step back to give him space.

 

“If you say so.”

 

“Yeah.” Barnes couldn’t stop himself staring at Steve. He’s alive, he's awake, he’s … still going to be a pain in the ass, but at least it’ll be easier to drag him to Yaniv. “Thanks. For saving my life.” Steve blushed a little bit.

 

“I couldn’t let him kill you. It was the right thing to do.” He said with a one shouldered shrug. Barnes couldn’t stop the small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Besides, I’m 162, right? You protected me.” The smile slipped away.

 

“Yeah.” Barnes rubbed at his wrist. “You heard that?”

 

“Most of it.” Steve said. “So, I’m supposed to be an unstoppable killing machine then.” He looked repulsed at the idea.

 

“They’d have tried it.” Barnes admitted. “But they wouldn’t succeed. Not with you.” Steve scowled.

 

“I killed four people. I wake up, I don’t have any memories, not a damn clue who or where I am, and the first thing I do is kill four people.” He said bitterly. “Who’s to say they didn’t succeed? Or maybe that’s how I always was.” Steve went pale at the thought.

 

“Hey, no. That’s not like you at all. You did what you had to do to survive. It was you or them.” Barnes scowled. “It won’t make it better, or change what happened, but it’s the truth. You’re a good person Steve. They try for a century and not be able to change that.” Steve got a funny look on his face.

 

“Do you know me?” He asked. Barnes froze. How much should he say? Would he be a hypocrite if he told Steve everything he remembered about him? He’d told Steve he hated him when Steve had tried to force him into the mould of the Bucky he’d known.

 

“A little, I guess.” He hedged. Steve brightened.

 

“And my name is Steve?” He asked. Barnes nodded. “What’s yours?”

 

“I’m B– Jack.” Barnes said quickly. Not quite James, not quite Bucky. He had answered to many names in the past. He could make it work. Steve looked at him with sceptical eyes. “What?”

 

“Nothing. Just - nevermind.” Steve said. Barnes narrowed his eyes, but Steve didn’t elaborate.

 

“We should get out of here. I don’t think any more are coming, but I don’t know.” He looked around the corpse strewn road. A crow had already landed at one of the bodies and started to pick at it. Steve nodded.

 

“Do you know anywhere we can go to lose them?” He asked. Barnes looked west, towards the train tracks in the distance.

 

“I got a place in mind. It’s called Yaniv.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope people are still enjoying reading this. I certainly enjoy writing it! A great way to keep me motivated is to comment - hearing what you guys think makes me want to write for hours on end.
> 
> Thanks a bunch!


	10. Chapter 10

“Clint, put the shield down.” Natasha ordered. Clint scowled and hugged it tighter to his chest.

 

“Nooooo. He’ll steal it.” He glared at Sam mistrustfully. Sam snorted, leaning jauntily on his crutches.

 

“As opposed to what you’re doing?” He said with a grin.

 

“If anything, I should hold it,” Tony interjected. “What with having all my limbs in working order.” He went to grab at the shield, but the combined glared from Sam and Clint made him reconsider. “Fine three legged race, don’t share your toys.”

 

“Get your own,” Clint hobbled away with his prize. Sam followed, trying to trip him up the whole time.

 

“Has he always been annoying?” Tony complained. “I mean, Pepper tells me I’m annoying, but I don’t think she’s met Barton.” Tony’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “I should introduce her to Barton.”

 

“They’ve met.” Natasha said coolly.

 

“Of course they have. Lucky her.” Out of Natasha’s sight, Sam tried the ‘what’s the behind you?’ gambit and failed miserably. Clint shoved him over. “Any word from Capsicle and frostbite?

 

“Radio silence since I relayed the plan. I’m not worried.” Natasha replied. “If anything I’d be worried if we did hear from them.”

 

“Because that’d mean something happened to change the plan.” Tony finished, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Huh, yeah. Makes sense.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced at Clint and Sam, who had the shield by one strap each. Interesting. “Hold that thought, something’s come up.” He patted her on the shoulder as he passed her, a mischievous gleam in his eye.

 

She sighed and counted down from ten.

_3, 2, 1…_

“Hey, no way!”

 

“Let go!”

_CRASH_

 

The shield rolled past her and down the side of the Doc Liebovic’s building. She looked back at the make-shift Avengers. Sam held onto one of Tony’s wrist while Clint gave him a Chinese burn on the other. She shook her head and followed the shield down the alley, trying to see where it had ended up.

 

It was in the hands of a silhouetted figure, waiting in shadows of the fading daylight. She reached instinctively for her gun, but he held up a placating hand.

 

“Sorry, I shouldn’t be so dramatic. I saw the opportunity and I thought what the hell.” He stepped into the light and Natasha felt all the breath leave her body. A watery smile graced her face.

 

“Well, you did come back from the dead. I’ll let it pass this time.” She said thickly. For a moment they stood still, assessing each other, until Phil held out his hand.

 

 “It’s good to see you.” He went to shake her hand, but she pulled him in for a hug, holding tight.

 

“Speak for yourself,” she said into his lapel. “All this time you were alive, and I had to hear about it front Barton? I’ll never forgive you.”

 

Coulson wrapped his free arm around her shoulders.

 

“If it helps, I didn’t mean for him to find out, but no one else could pull him out of deep cover after SHIELD went down. I meant to tell you two at the same time, but it never worked out, and after the mess HYDRA made…” He shook his head. Natasha let him go, straightening his tie as she did.

 

“Phil. I’m so glad you weren’t one of them. If you’d come back, and you hadn’t been on our side, I don’t know what I’d have done.” She said, soft and low. Phil put a hand on her shoulder.

 

“You’d have done whatever you had to.” He said firmly. Like putting on a mask, Natasha’s face lost all its vulnerability and she gave him a cynical grin.

 

“Thanks, but you have too much faith in people. And really, hiding in the shadows? If I’d been quicker, you’d need to find another shot of whatever saved you last time.” She remarked. Phil winced.

 

“Not something I’d recommend, but it doesn’t matter. If you’d been any quicker, she’d have stopped you.” He looked over her shoulder and Natasha whirled around.

 

“Agent Romanov.” Melinda May said dryly. “It’s been a long time.”

 

“Agent May.” Natasha returned, her face as stoic as Melinda’s. They didn’t shake hands or smile, but each woman’s stance relaxed slightly. Coulson was pleased. He’d couldn’t think of two people more capable of securing Captain America’s safe return, and the fact they trusted each other was a big part of that.

 

Back on the road, the three men were still arguing.

 

“Look, all I’m saying is you two need both your hands, Natasha’s off rescuing Cap, so I should hold onto it. For safe keeping. I’m way less likely to drop it.” Tony said. Clint scoffed.

 

“I wouldn’t have dropped it if you hadn’t cheated.” He retorted, trying to fold his arm while holding his crutches with his elbows.

 

“If you two can’t be responsible adults about this, then I’ll carry it.” Sam said placatingly, but he couldn’t stop himself grinning. Clint punched him in the arm.

 

“I think you’ll find I’m taking temporary ownership of the Captain’s property.” Coulson interrupted. Clint opened his mouth to argue, turned and saw Coulson flanked by Romanov and May. 

 

“Coulson, you made it!” He said, beaming. Coulson raised an eyebrow.

 

“Of course I did. The Avengers needed assistance.” If anything, Clint’s smile widened. Sam looked pleased to be included. Tony gawked at Coulson.

 

“You were dead. How are you not dead?” He strode up to Coulson, looked him and down, then poked him hard in the chest. Coulson looked down, unimpressed.

 

“Satisfied?” 

 

“Not even a little bit.”

 

“I need you to be unsatisfied on the Bus. We’ve got a list of things to do, and evacuating you is nowhere near close to the end. We have two SUVs waiting. Everyone bar Agent Romanov and Agent May, you’re with me.”

 

Natasha swept away, following Agent May towards their transport to Yaniv. Coulson glanced over his group, and the man he’d not met before. Sam looked at him like he wasn’t sure what to make of him.

 

“You must be Sam Wilson.” Coulson brushed past Stark and walked over, hand outstretched. “I’m Phil Coulson. I’m with SHIELD.” Sam nodded warily, shaking his hand.

 

“You understand how that’s not a huge comfort to hear these days.” He said. “But these guys seem to know you, and they’ve got good taste.”

 

“Thank you. Your assistance with the Captains activities has been most welcome.” Coulson said warmly.

 

“Captain America came to me for help. I couldn’t exactly leave him on my porch.” Sam shrugged helplessly. “And Steve’s a good friend. I couldn’t let him go off on his own.”

 

“Hey, members one and two of the Steve Roger’s appreciation society, I thought we had places to be.” Tony moaned. Clint took a shot at Stark’s knee with his crutch.

 

“Alright. Follow me.” Coulson turned to lead them away. Tony fell into step beside him.

 

“Life model decoy.” He tried.

 

“No.”

 

“Hologram.”

 

“No.”

 

“Clone?”

 

“They may have cancelled Supernanny, but I can and will still taze you.”

 

 

\--(X)--

 

 

It’s been two days since the HYDRA assault, and Barnes estimated they were no more than ten miles away from their destination. They’d made good time, between the gruelling pace Barnes had set and the few breaks they’d had. Ten miles. Barnes repeated it in his head like a mantra. Ten more miles and then you can rest.

 

He was beyond exhausted. His body ached all over, even though most of his bruises were long gone. The world seemed muzzy around the edges, and every time he blinked, he fought to get his eyes open. _Ten more miles,_ he thought. Just ten more miles and Steve would be gone, safe and protected by the smartest and strongest people in the world, and beyond it.

 

He trudged onward. Keep moving. Keep him safe. Complete the mission. Everyone was counting on him.

 

He tripped on an uneven railway sleeper and would have hit the ground if Steve hadn’t grabbed him by the arm and hauled him up.

 

“Jack?” He let go and Barnes wobbled, trying to get his balance. His legs trembled as he stood. He’d pushed himself too far. “Are you okay?” Steve slung the liberated HYDRA rifle he’d been holding onto his back, alongside their bag of meagre supplies. He looked like he didn’t know what to do with his now free hands, so they hung by his sides uselessly.

 

“Yeah. Yeah.” Barnes squeezed his eyes shut, trying to clear his head. Everything remained stubbornly fuzzy. Why did it feel so damned familiar?

 

 

He’d gotten the same feeling when he was being brought out of cyrostasis. The thought turned his stomach. For a moment he thought he’d hurl and he bent over, arms pulled around his stomach. The feeling left after a long moment. The sudden nausea cleared through the haze and put the world into pin sharp focus. Steve had moved in front of him, half crouching, trying to catch his eye. Steve looked scruffy, his hair in disarray, a weeks’ worth of beard on his concerned face. Barnes glowered. Steve didn’t look convinced.

 

“We should stop.”

 

“No.” Barnes straightened and winced as his body protested. “It’s too open here. They’ll find you.” He tried to take a step, but his leg buckled. Steve went to hold him up again but Barnes pushed him away. They had to keep moving. His head hurt.

 

“What about you?” Steve’s eyes were locked on him intently. What about- what?

 

“Me? Nothing… I’m too far gone.” His voice sounded muffled, like hearing himself speak through a tape recorder. “They won’t… they’ll kill me.” The thought should have worried him more, but everything felt so distant. He looked at his human hand, make a weak fist. It felt numb, like the metal one. Why couldn’t he think?

 

“I wasn’t talking about HYDRA. You have to stop.” Steve stood in the way now, an immovable object. “You’re hurting yourself.” Barnes faltered. He had a hundred things to say. _I know, but you can’t stop now. Leave me behind. Yaniv’s dead ahead, wait where I told you, help is coming. Don’t be an idiot, save yourself, just go!_

 

He couldn’t get make his thoughts into words. The world turned silent and strange, and the ground rushed up to meet him.

 

\--(x)--

 

Steve lunged forward, catching Jack before he hit the floor. He pulled one of Jack’s arm over his shoulder, scooped up his legs and ran, scanning the horizon.

 

Was HYDRA here? Had they done something? What was happening to Jack?

 

An empty field surrounded the track; the weeds kept short by whatever wildlife still lived in the desolate place. Steve didn’t stop. He ran until the field turned into a wood, and the buildings went from domestic to industrial. He stopped when he dashed past a rusty, nearly illegible sign. Yaniv. They’d made it. It hadn’t taken him more than twenty minutes.

 

Jack shifted in his arms and Steve set him down, leaning him back against one of the wood buildings. He supporting his head as it lolled to one side jarringly. Steve swallowed. Was he hurt? Dead? He checked Jack’s body for injuries, any bleeding he might have missed, but aside from the damage done to his metal arm and the deep, bruised looking rings around his eyes, Jack was unmarred. Steve held a hand over Jack’s mouth. Still breathing. He moved his hand away, studying Jack’s face.

 

He looked different when he wasn’t scowling. Softer, younger, more human.  Steve hadn’t been sure, at first. With his metal arm, his single minded focus on getting Steve to this place and the fact he didn’t seem to sleep had made him doubt, but he’d seen the man eat, drink and disappear off to one side to take a leak. He was human enough, just hard and cold.

 

With that stripped away, he looked vulnerable for the first time. It tugged on something deep inside Steve, something he couldn’t recognise. Whatever name he’d once had for it had been hacked away. It was strong though, and sad.

 

Jack hissed under his breath, his face drawn and his eyes scrunched up. Steve let him go and drew back. The Jack he’d been walking with hadn’t let him touch him. The one waking up might not appreciate it either.

 

“Steve?” he said, blinking blearily. His blue eyes were bloodshot and dry. Steve gave him a tentative smile.

 

“You gave me a scare back there. I thought you were dead.”

 

“Thought you were smaller.” Jack said, something fond in his expression. Steve’s face dropped. Did that mean something? Jack’s eyes flicked over Steve’s face and his expression shuttered. “Where are we?”

 

“Yaniv. You weren’t out long. I didn’t know what happened to you, so I grabbed you and ran.” Steve looked around. “Hell of a place.” Jack gazed around, not taking it in. There were dozen of buildings on the grounds, some brick, some tin, most of them completely dilapidated. “So what now? I think you’re right HYDRA probably won’t look for us here, but we can’t stay here forever. We don’t have enough supplies for one thing.”

 

“It’s okay. There’s people coming, tomorrow. They’ll get you out.” Jack shifted with a wince. 

 

“They’re friends of yours?” Steve asked.

 

“Sometimes.” Jack looked wistful this time. What kind of friends would a man like Jack have? Steve wondered. “We should get inside.” Jack heaved himself up the wall, getting his legs under him and standing up. He swayed on the spot for a second and almost fell back. He reached out his metal arm, the plates juddered and he gripped the wall so tight the wood splintered. “The brick one, with a green door.” Steve turned around clocking the one.

 

“Got it. Looks usable.” He took a step towards it. He turned back when Jack spoke.

 

“Steve.” Jack looked up at Steve from behind his unkempt hair. “I know you already carried me this far. I – could you, uh.” Jack swallowed, his human hand clenched so tight the hand was completely white. “Help me.” He said it so softly Steve almost didn’t hear it. His head was bowed and as Steve stepped forward, Jack flinched, inhaling sharply. The strong, sad tug happened again, an ache so sharp it was almost physical.

 

Who was Jack, and what the hell happened to him? He hadn’t looked afraid when he was being beaten, nor when they were on the run; but asking for help scared him. How did that happen to a person?

 

Steve resolved to ask him later. He got beside Jack and held onto his waist. Jack swung his human arm across Steve’s shoulders, sagging into Steve’s side as they walked. Steve nudged the door open with his foot and deposited Jack against the fall wall, sitting him on the floor. Jack hunched into himself, drawing his knees to his chest. Steve dumped their bag of supplies and his rifle in a corner. He hesitated for a second, then went and sat next to Jack, almost shoulder to shoulder. Jack didn’t uncurl.

 

They sat in silence for a while. The minutes ticked by slowly. Twice Jack’s eyes slipped shut, his head falling forward a little; then he’d snap awake with a small gasp. Steve wished there was some comfort he could give, or help he could offer, but what? He didn’t know Jack. He didn’t know anything. He felt so useless.

 

The third time it happened, Steve reached over, tugged the shoulder of Jack wool jacket, and Jack slumped onto his shoulder.

 

“Steve?”  Jack mumbled. “Sorry, I’ll stay awake.”

 

“When was the last time you slept?” Steve shuffled down so Jack’s neck was at a more comfortable angle. Jack nestled in. Steve wondered if he was even aware he was doing it.

 

“Six days. I couldn’t, not after… I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to remember.” He sounded so forlorn, tired and vulnerable. Steve reached out and smoothed some of his long hair away from his face.

 

“I can wake you up if you want, if it gets bad. “ Steve offered. Jack’s head lifted from his shoulder for a moment and Steve’s breath caught. He looked so grateful for so small a thing. “It’s alright. You get some rest. I have this watch.” Steve said confidently. Jack didn’t hesitate, burrowing in Steve’s shoulder again, and his breathing evened out in less than a minute. Steve leant back against the wall, his eyes on the door.

 

He had so many questions. Whos, hows, whats and whys ran through his mind, doubts and hopes and suspicions. He kept quiet. He could wait. For now, he had a watch to keep.

 

\--(X)--

 

Barnes woke up lying on the ground, his head cushioned on Steve’s leg. He sat up with a gasp, flinging himself away. Where were they? How did they get there? The last thing he remembered was walking along the tracks. He wasn’t sure where he got a knife from, but he had one in his hand as he scanned the small room for threats.

 

“Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay. Everything is fine.” Steve soothed. Barnes lowered the knife a fraction. “We’re at the station. I carried you here after you passed out from exhaustion. It’s around three in the morning, I think. You’ve been asleep for seven hours.” Barnes nearly dropped the blade.

 

“Seven hours?” He asked, incredulous. “Are you serious?” Steve nodded.

 

“Yeah. You were out like a light. You fell over at the three hour mark; that was my fault. You seemed comfortable where you landed, so I let you sleep.” Steve explained. Barnes put the knife down gently, not moving back to Steve’s side.

 

“But I haven’t – I’ve never,” Barnes worried at his temple with the heel of his metal palm. “I don’t usually-”

 

“You must have needed it.” Steve said with a shrug. He stood, stretched and made his way to the oppose side of the room, where their bag of supplies was. He pulled out a tin of canned surprise, as Barnes had taken to thinking of the tins which lacked labels. “Breakfast?” Barnes held out a hand, and the tin landed in it. He picked the knife back up to open it and pulled out a shrivelled pickle. It still smelt alright, so he ate it. Steve looked at the contents of his can with disdain.

 

“I’ll swap a pickle for a – actually, I don’t know what that is.” He held up a sliver of something small and slimy. Barnes snorted.

 

“You’re on your own pal. Good luck.” He chewed another pickle. Steve grimaced as he tried the slimy thing, shuddering as he swallowed. He held up the next one, which looked green where the other one had been yellow. Barnes sighed and got up, sitting next to Steve again. “Fine, fine, don’t hurt yourself.” Steve snatched a pickle and chewed it with relish, probably trying to get the other taste out of his mouth. Barnes grabbed Steve’s can and sniffed it. He gagged, swore and hurled it across the room.

 

“Told you.” Steve said. Barnes shuddered.

 

“Damn Rogers, I can’t believe you ate that. If you get gut rot from that thing, you’ve only got yourself to blame.” He said, chuckling. It was so easy to fall into an easy, friendly space when Steve wasn’t shooting pitying looks at him every five seconds. It was nice. It took him a moment to realise that Steve was staring at him.

 

“Rogers?” he said hopefully. Barnes shoved the rest of the can at him.

 

“That’s you. Steven Grant Rogers.” Steve watched him with wide eager eyes and Barnes sighed. Steve might be like him because he didn’t have his memories, but they weren’t the same by any stretch. Steve was still Steve. He hadn’t been tortured into submission and turned into a weapon. He wasn’t going to wake in the night, heavy with the horror of his memories. Steve was missing a lifetime, but really, it was only a week, not seventy years. “I guess you want to know everything about yourself.”

 

“Whatever you can tell me.” Steve said. “Where am I from? Do I have any family? Friends? Who am I?”

 

“You’re from Brooklyn, New York.”

 

“America.” Steve said thoughtfully.

 

“Yeah. Now, some of this is going to sound a little strange, so just keep in mind that your memories were stolen by a Nazi death cult and that you’re being told this story by a man with a robot arm.” Steve didn’t even blink.

 

“Tell me.”

 

 So, he talked. He told Steve the story of his own life, from Steve standing up to bullies as a frail, tiny kid, meeting Peggy, becoming a super soldier, fighting a war with the Howling Commandoes and his seventy year slumber in ice. He told him about the Avengers, SHIELD and HYDRA, and the price of freedom. He told Steve about a man named Bucky Barnes, his best friend, who died falling from a train in the Alps.

 

Steve listened attentively, nodding in places, frowning in others. He seemed to like the idea of being a Superhero, a force for good who’d saved the world. Barnes wondered how much killing weighed on his mind. 

 

Barnes memories were nothing but killing sometimes. If Steve felt even half of what he did, he was glad to fill in the gaps with heroics and noble self-sacrifice.

 

“So that’s who you are.” Barnes finished. His throat was dry and scratchy. He hadn’t talked that much… He couldn’t remember ever talking so much. “Do you remember any of it?”

 

“Nothing.” Steve sighed. “It’s like hearing a fairy tale. I can imagine doing those things. If I was in that situation, I think maybe I could have made those choices, but I can’t remember it.” He was quiet for a moment. “It’s a lot to take in. Is that really everything?”

 

“Yeah.” Barnes confirmed. Steve frowned, his eyebrows scrunching together and his mouth pinched into a thin line.

 

“No, that can’t be it.” He said. His eyes flicked around as he sifted the information in his head. “There has to be more than that.”

 

“If there is, you’re talking to the wrong guy. I don’t know any more.” Barnes said defensively. Steve fixed him with a determined glare.

 

“Don’t lie to me.” He said, steel in his voice. Barnes crossed his arms, leaning back.

 

“I’m ain’t lying.” He protested.

 

“Then what am I doing here?” Steve shot back. “I took down HYDRA, then what? Did I get kidnapped? Did I get halfway across the world before anyone even noticed I was gone?” He made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “It doesn’t make sense.”

 

“It does. Look, you took down HYDRA in Washington, they were gunning for you. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”  Now Barnes knew he was lying. Steve walked right into their hands, all because of him. Steve ran a hand through his hair, still trying to process everything.

 

“What about you?” Barnes felt a stab of fear.

 

“What about me?”

 

“You know me.” Steve said. Barnes nodded. Might as well keep his story the same.

 

“I said so, didn’t I?”

 

“Then why aren’t you in any of those stories? When did we meet? How?” Steve got up, eyeing Barnes warily. “Who are you?”

 

Barnes got up, mirroring Steve, his arms out placatingly.

 

“I’m a friend.”

 

“You’re not an Avenger, not with SHIELD.” His body tensed, his feet planted, and everything in Barnes screamed that Steve was a threat. “How did you know where to find me?”

 

Barnes forced himself not to react. He kept his hands outstretched, open in front of him.

 

“I worked with the Avengers, we didn’t know where you were. We hit three places at once, I found you and got you out.”

 

“Prove it.” Steve challenged. Barnes put a hand to his collar, activating his radio.

 

“Black Widow, this is Soldier. Come in.” He said clearly. “I repeat, Black Widow, this is Soldier. Please acknowledge.” He waited a moment.

 

Nothing. Not even static. He glanced down, unclipping the little machine and examining it. Steve watched him closely. Barnes held the device up in the dim light. One side of it was completely crushed.

 

“It’s damaged. When I got stomped on, it must have gotten in the way.” He offered it up for Steve to look at. Steve didn’t take it. “Look, if I worked for HYDRA, I wouldn’t be trying to get you away from them, and they wouldn’t be trying to kill me.” Barnes reasoned.

 

“You worked for them before.” He accused, and Barnes flinched. “I heard them talk. What he called you. A killing machine.” He spat.

 

“Then you heard him call me faulty, a tool, and I’m a person. I’m human. I’m not a weapon!” Barnes didn’t realise he’d shouted until the last word stopped echoing in the little room. He forced down everything building in his chest, the frustration, the anger, the hurt at the way Steve looked at him. “You heard me told him where he could stick his offers. You saved my life. You let me bring you here, away from them. You can’t believe I’d work with HYDRA, not now.”

 

Steve shifted, but he didn’t back down.

 

“HYDRA messed with my mind.” Steve sounded wretched. “They took everything away from me. All I’ve got is what they left me with. So why is it, when I look at you, I trust you?” Steve looked pleadingly at him. “How can I trust that?” Barnes wavered.

 

For the past week, he’d used his old identity to get Steve to trust him. It’d been like slipping on a mask; a useful illusion, but still a disguise. The longer he spent out of cryo – the more time he spent around people – the more he started to recognise parts of himself as human. There were the parts that wanted to crack a joke every now and then, that would trade his entire stock of tinned crap for a steak, hated mushrooms, hummed under his breath sometimes, though he needed a haircut, was annoyed at the dirt under his nails. He wondered how much of that Steve would have recognised.

 

In that moment, whether he called himself Jack or Bucky didn’t matter. He wanted to do what was right. He’d give Steve what he deserved. The truth.

 

“I think I should tell you another story. It’s not as long as yours, but it might explain a few things.” Barnes started softly. “I was twenty eight when I died. I was in the army, declared KIA on a mission. No one went back to look for a body. ” Barnes cleared his throat and raised his metal arm higher. It glinted in the dull morning light. “I woke up in a lab, with this attached to my shoulder. HYDRA found me. For the next seventy years, they tortured me, brainwashed me and used me to do their dirty work. I don’t know how many people I killed for them. They wiped my memories every time, and froze me until they needed md again. There was no one to get me out. Everyone I knew thought I was dead, and then, eventually, everyone I knew was dead, and there was no one left who even knew my name.” He broke off. The story felt fake. They tortured him, he should have fought it, they shouldn’t have let them-

 

“You’re like me.” Steve breathed. “Or I’m like you. They wanted to turn me into what you used to be.” Barnes nodded sadly.

 

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner. I pulled you out of the machine, but it was too late. They were chipping away at your memories and I didn’t know how to stop it.” Barnes grimaced. “They started with your new memories and worked their way back. I didn’t even realise at first. The first night we went to ground, you tried talking to me, and you were acting like it was during the war again. By the next night, they’d gotten almost everything. You tried to fight it, and I think you won, in a way. I don’t think they took the last thing you were holding onto. That’s why you trust me.”

 

“Bucky.” Steve mumbled. “I was thinking about Bucky.” Barnes throat went dry.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“We were friends since I was a kid. He’d have been the last thing to go. But why would that make me..?” Barnes watched Steve like a hawk. Confusion flickered on his face, replaced by dawning realisation. “You were their prisoner for seventy years?” He asked. Barnes flinched. Their prisoner. But, really, wasn’t that what he’d been?

 

“Yeah.” He said thickly. Steve thought for a second.

 

“What was the mission?” he asked. Barnes frowned.

 

“My mission?”

 

“You were in the army, declared KIA on a mission. What was it?” There was a hint of desperation in Steve’s voice. Barnes swallowed.

 

“I was part of a team capturing a HYDRA scientist. He was on a train in the Alps. I got blasted out the side of the car.” The images flashed to the front of his mind, Steve’s hand stretched out but too far to reach, and the scene falling away as he hurtled to the ground. He didn’t need to wipe them away this time. It didn’t hurt.

 

“Bucky?” The desperation was replaced by hope. The tight feeling in Barnes chest subsided.  He wasn’t the Bucky Steve remembered from the forties. Right now, that Bucky meant nothing to either of them. What he could do was lay claim to parts of that identity. It was stolen from him before. Maybe he should steal it back.

 

“Yeah Steve. It’s me.” Bucky said. His time, it didn’t feel like putting on a mask. It felt like taking one off.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the lateness of this chapter. Life has a way of getting real busy without warning sometimes. Anyhow, hope you enjoyed it!


	11. Chapter 11

Steve dozed on Bucky’s human shoulder, huffing out soft, warm little breaths, tousling the ends of Bucky’s hair. They’d talked into the early hours, dared each other to eat what remained in the mystery tins and, after falling in companionable silence, taken turns on watch or resting. Bucky closed his eyes, his breathing deep and even. He couldn’t remember what happiness felt like, but if he had to imagine, he thought it would feel like this. The world outside, bathed in midmorning light, with cheerily chirping birds, was peaceful.

 

A week ago, he could never have relaxed like this. Felt whole again like this. What a difference such a short time made. What a difference Steve made, being awake and aware. Without him, who knew how long it would have taken to realise being Bucky again wasn’t giving up. It wasn’t a concession to yet another person trying to control him, or a tribute to the legacy of a ghost.  It was a victory. Taking back his name spat in the face of everything HYDRA had done to him.

 

 _They tried to kill Bucky…me._ He thought. _They tried to kill me, but I’m here, I’m alive, and I’m Bucky._

 

He started at the thought, rubbing his metal hand against his ribs. His chest ached. He frowned, pushing on it experimentally. Not physical. Hmm. He tried thinking of his days in Brooklyn. He recalled a general store, the magazine rack inside. He’d pulled out a book and read about invaders from Mars. Steve had laughed at it, said ‘the chances of anything manlike on Mars are a million to one’, in a deep, scholarly sounding voice, then they’d run out the store, the owner yelling after them. The ache swelled like a balloon, big and light.

 

 

He thought about the Winter Soldier, and the family in Stockholm. The father was a scientist, the mother a mathematician. They’d had a teenaged son, a student. He’d killed them all, slaughtered them where they cowered, put a bullet in the woman’s brain as she tried to throw her body over her skinny, blonde child. He hadn’t hesitated. He didn’t have a reason to. HYDRA said they were to be killed, so he had killed them.

 

The balloon burst, turned cold and heavy. It spread like poison, and he sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. He knew this feeling. He’d fought it often enough after Washington. This one tore through his mind and left a swooping feeling in his gut, like he was plummeting from the train again, but this time he wouldn’t stop. He scrambled for an anything happy to fight it off before it took hold, but Brooklyn vanished, slipping away the more he tried to recall it. All he could think of was the bloody murder scene, one headshot turning into another; one man fell into a pool of his own brain matter, only to be someone else by the time he landed. One body became another, and another. Fat, thin, young, old, men, women. Finally, Steve’s face, bloody and swollen from the beating on the helicarrier. He wasn’t breathing, and he had a red hole in the centre of his forehead.

 

This time he couldn’t stop the hitch in his breath, or a tear leaking down his face. He swiped at it as it hit his cheek, the rough grooves of his hand scratching the delicate skin around his eye. It didn’t happen like that. Steve was safe and alive, he could see him. He was right beside him. Bucky shivered and wrapped his metal arm around his chest. A chasm of guilt and grief yawning open inside him. He squeezed, trying to close it up, but all he did was bruise.

 

Steve grumbled on his shoulder, snuffled and shuffled further into Bucky’s space, his face locked in a frown.

 

Bucky held his breath, the black feeling frozen halfway through taking him over. The little crease between Steve’s eyebrows didn’t budge. Gingerly, he reached over, carding his fingers through Steve’s hair. His hair had been soft before, and a little greasy, but he couldn’t feel it now, not with his metal fingers. Still, the touch calmed them both. He remembered being a tactile man once. It seemed he hadn’t changed. Human contact helped him. Touch was a strong sense.

 

“Buck?” Steve mumbled into his shoulder, and Bucky jerked his hand back. Steve settled and everything was silent. Bucky stilled. Something had changed.

 

“Wake up.” Bucky breathed, nudging his shoulder up. Steve’s eyes snapped open, awake and alert. He sat up without a sound, his jaw set and his eyes questioning. Bucky put a finger to his lips and crept towards the door, peering through the gaps in the wood. No visible threats. Out the corner of his eye he saw Steve lifting their supply bag onto his shoulder and checking their guns. He brought Bucky’s as well, meeting him by the door.

 

“What have we got?” Steve whispered.

 

“The birds are gone. Something spooked ‘em.” Bucky said. Steve nodded, his face serious.

 

It could be the Avengers. It could be HYDRA. It could be a rambler, or a morbidly curious tourist looking to photograph some urban decay. Bucky watched for any sign of unnatural movement. Nothing presented itself.

 

“Unknown combatants, so we’ll start with observation. If it’s the Avengers, they’ll make the first move. If they shoot at us, it’s on to plan B.” He tapped the barrel of the rifle. “The Avengers who came to Europe are Hawkeye, Black Widow and Iron Man. Wilson was already down, so he’s out. I don’t know about Hawkeye, but if he’s around, he’ll be the dirty blonde one wearing purple. Shouldn’t be hard to miss him. The Widow wears black and has red hair and Stark is red, gold and obnoxious.” Bucky checked his rifle. All in order. He and Steve moved to the door.

 

“I thought you only spoke to Stark over the radio?” Steve said.

 

“That was more than enough. He asked me if I had a sidekick superhero costume.” Bucky grumbled. Steve looked him up and down, from his long greasy hair, wrinkled clothes and worn boots and back up to his unamused expression.

 

“You don’t exactly look like sidekick material.” Steve smirked. Bucky grinned, all sharp teeth and dark eyes.

 

“You’re damn right. This is my show Rogers. You better keep up.” Bucky opened the door and stole away, sticking close to the walls and the shadows of the trees. If Steve hadn’t been right behind him, he might have lost track of him. Bucky moved faster than he thought.

 

They headed toward the main station building, sticking to a path parallel to the tracks. Even with all the fallen foliage, they were silent. Bucky kept his eyes open, analysing their surroundings constantly. His blood thundered through his veins, adrenaline heightening his senses. Steve stuck to him like glue. He’d forgotten how good it felt having someone to cover his back again; someone he could trust. Of course it was Steve. It always had been.

 

He’d miss that.

 

A shadow moved in the trees, a figure in all black. The hair on Bucky’s arm stood up. All black. HYDRA. He motioned to Steve and they ducked into a ruined building. The figure appeared again, swift and silent. Bucky’s eyes narrowed. Whoever they were, they were efficient.

 

The person stopped suddenly, head cocked to one side. He narrowed his eyes, considering. Whoever this person was, they wouldn’t be a match for two supersoldiers at their peak. If they were heading for a head on confrontation, it meant back up had to be close by. He scanned the area, but couldn’t see any more signs of movement.

 

The next step the person made was loud, the sharp crack of a twig underfoot. Bucky frowned. That was deliberate. They were announcing themselves. The figure continued on, not as stealthily now, or keeping to any particular path. They got closer, and Bucky took in the black leather outfit, stiff military bearing and long black hair. Her gun was drawn, but pointed at the ground.

 

 She was a different type of hunter. What game was she playing? Steve stared at her for a moment, seemed to come to a decision and nodded to Bucky.

 

“Wait, don’t, she could be –” Bucky hissed, but Steve was already striding towards her. The woman in black turned, gun half raised as Steve let his feet crunch into the dirt as he walked. Bucky slipped into step beside him, glowering. She didn’t lower her gun the whole way, her body a hard, tense line. Steve stopped a few feet away, facing her with a cold look on his face. She returned it.

 

“Captain Rogers, I’m Agent May. I’m with SHIELD. I’m here to bring you in. We have transport waiting. Please come with me.” Bucky shifted, putting Steve behind him.

 

“Sorry Agent May. I was told a very specific group of people were picking him up, and you’re not part of the group. Try again.” Bucky returned. May’s gaze flickered over him and he recognised a tactical analysis. The odds weren’t in her favour and he saw no signs of back-up. She was at a disadvantage. Her posture didn’t change. Did she think she could take them in a fight?

 

“I’m here to provide back-up to Agent Romanov. The rest of the Avengers are currently either incapacitated, or were called to other matters, as the situation at hand no longer required their particular skill set.” May said.

 

“Convenient.” Steve deadpanned. May observed him with a sour expression. Steve wondered what she saw.

 

“Not a word I’d use. It’s lead to this little stand-off, in an exposed area with potential enemy combatants sighted in the vicinity.” Her face pinched with irritation.

 

“HYDRA are here?” Steve glanced around, like he expected to see a horde of black clad soldiers charge through the tree line.

 

“Agent Romanov and I engaged several HYDRA operatives ten miles from here, approximately half an hour ago. It’s a fair assumption they’ll search for you here. That’s why you need to come with me now.” Her voice set Bucky’s teeth on edge and lit a fire inside him, rankled and rebellious.

 

“You still haven’t given us any reason to trust you.” He said.

 

“I’m not shooting at you.” She retorted. “If I was HYDRA the last thing I’d want would be a civil conversation out in the open.” She looked past his dismissively. “Captain, we’re waiting on you.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere.” Steve said, his tone brooking no argument. Bucky stopped himself grinning. Steve might not remember being Captain America, but he never stopped being himself. “Seems like the only way for you to prove who you are is for Agent Romanov to confirm it. Until we’re certain, we’re not leaving.”

 

“Now is not the time for this conversation.” May snapped.

 

“No, now is the only time.” Steve stepped up beside Bucky, he planting himself there. “Until we hear from Agent Romanov, we’re staying right here. If you’re an ally, you’ll accept that. If you’re an enemy, then we’ll do what’s necessary to protect ourselves.” He said firmly. Agent May glared at him.

 

“Captain Rogers, I should inform you that due to your circumstances, I have been authorised to use force against you to bring you in, if there is any sign you’ve been compromised. Your refusal to comply, not to mention your continuing association with _him_ is more than enough evidence. Please come peacefully, now.”

 

“My association with - what? What’s that supposed to mean?” Steve’s knuckles went white.

 

“It means you’re so focused on whether I’m HYDRA or not, you don’t seem to realise you’re stood next to the Winter Soldier. Or perhaps he’s neglected to mention the fact he’s HYDRA’s most prolific and effective assassin.” Agent May said bitterly.

 

Bucky flinched and Steve went still. 

 

“I don’t know who you think you are, but no one talks about my friend like that.” He said, his voice low and angry. Agent May scowled, seemingly unaware they stood in the eye of a storm that was Steve’s quiet fury.

 

“Sir, I know you want to trust him, but believe me, that man is no friend to you.” For a second, Bucky wondered who she’d known who’d turned out to be HYDRA. Maybe a partner? They must have been close. It didn’t make her words sting any less.

 

“You don’t know anything about me.” Bucky growled. Agent May raised an eyebrow.

 

“I know about Monte Carlo, 2005.” She shot back.

 

“Good for you. Tell me about it sometime, because I’ve had some memory issues.” He tapped his temple. “It happens when you get brainwashed over and over.” Steve put a hand on his shoulder. Bucky shrugged it off. “Forget this Steve. Leave them hanging if they send some lackey to pick you up instead of coming themselves. I’ll find someone else to help you. We’ll figure something out, let’s just go.”

 

“I can’t let you do that.” May shifted her weight and Bucky reacted as she went from reading as an annoyance to a threat. He levelled his rifle at her at the same moment she raised her pistol. “I will use force if I need to. This gun is loaded with tranquiliser rounds. They can take down anyone, even a supersoldier. Please come with me. Now. I’m not going to ask again.”

 

“Not happening.” Bucky’s finger tightened on the trigger. He was a hair away from firing when he caught a flash of red in the trees behind May.

 

“Steve!” Natasha Romanov darted from the treeline, her red hair streaming behind her. She raced past May, dodged Bucky and flung herself into Steve’s arms. He juggled his gun and got an arm around her, tucking her smaller body into his chest. She gave him a squeeze and let him go. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” She said breathlessly, seemingly unaware of the stand-off she’d neatly defused by jumping in the middle of it.

 

“Uh,” Steve said eloquently. Romanov gave him a once over and took another step back, noticing something wrong that she couldn’t place. Steve glanced at Bucky. “Is she..?”

 

“That’s her, Natasha Romanov.” Bucky confirmed. “Guess this one is who she says she is.” He waved dismissively at Agent May. She glowered back. Romanov looked shrewdly from Bucky to Steve.

 

“Why don’t you know who I am?” She asked. Bucky could tell from the look on her face that she’d realised the answer.

 

“HYDRA.” Steve said darkly. “Apparently they haven’t got the message that using good people to do their dirty work is a bad idea.” He had his eyes on Bucky as he told her. She blanched, her eyes widening in recognition. She whirled to face Bucky, her hands clenched by her sides.

 

“What did they do to him?” Her voice was carefully modulated, cold and efficient. Steve looked over at him as well. They hadn’t talked about it beyond ‘HYDRA wiped your memories’. He wasn’t sticking around for much longer. He had to give her the information he had and trust her to remember it.

 

“HYDRA had him in the machine they used to wipe me, but with some new additions. He was halfway through the procedure when I pulled him out. I wasn’t fast enough. He’s got amnesia, but it’s confined to his personal history. He still retained all his skills, but not any emotional attachments. I don’t know if it’s permanent.” He faltered, thinking back to the people in cells, in the corridor leading to the machine. Romanov noticed.

 

“But?” She coaxed, her voice gentle, but firm. Bucky met her eyes.

 

“But based on other subjects I observed in the facility, it’s likely.” He said resignedly. “And they were all, without exception, driven insane by their exposure to the machine.”

 

“What? There were others? Buck, you never told me.” Steve breathed. “And they were insane? But, I’m fine. I mean, not _fine_ ; I still don’t remember things, but-”

 

“You’ve got a couple of advantages.” Bucky said, resting a hand on Steve’s arm. “First, you got me. You didn’t get put through the full process because we tore the machine apart and got you out.” Steve put a hand on Bucky’s wrist and squeezed it gratefully. “Second, you’re a supersoldier. You’re literally the peak of human perfection. If anyone could come out the other side of what they put you through and not have a brain made of mush, it’s you.” He let his hand drop away and faced Romanov. Agent May stood next to her, her weapon holstered and her posture at attention. “Last, you’ve got these guys. If anyone can figure out a way to reverse what HYDRA did to you, it’s the Avengers.”

 

“He’s right. We’re going to do everything in our power to get your memories back.” Romanov promised.

 

“Thanks.” Steve said with a smile. His face fell when he saw red on Romanov’s body. “You’re wounded.” He said. She grimaced.

 

“HYDRA are in the area. Agent May and I split up to search the area and I ran into a patrol. I stopped them before they could alert any back-up in the vicinity, but not before one of them got a lucky shot in. It’s nothing to worry about. Just a graze.” It wasn’t bleeding heavily, so Bucky took her at her word. “They weren’t far from here where I stopped them. I hid the bodies, but if someone finds them the station’s going to be swamped with soldiers. We need to leave.” Her gaze flickered to Bucky. He shook his head minutely and she raised her chin in acknowledgement. “Come on Steve. Everyone’s waiting for you. We’ve been worried.”

 

“Alright, let’s go.” Steve took her lead and they walked side by side towards the main road, with Agent May in front, taking point. Bucky didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on Steve’s back as he walked away. It took Steve twenty three steps to realise Bucky hadn’t followed. He turned back, looking confused. “Buck, you okay? Did we leave something behind?”

 

“No, we got everything.” Bucky called back. Romanov and May stopped too, observing.

 

“Well come on then. Let’s get out of here.” Steve raised his eyebrows expectantly. Bucky stayed where he was.

 

“Yeah, I, uh.” Bucky ran a hand through his greasy hair. He’d imagined this moment so many times, but he’d never figured out what to say.

 

_“What about you? Are you ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”_

 

“No.” He said finally. Steve blinked.

  
“No?” He took a tentative step back towards him. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean I’m not coming.” Bucky said, fighting the urge to blurt the words out.

 

“Is this some kind of joke, because this ain’t funny.” Steve crossed his arms.

 

“No joke. You’re leaving with them, and I’m not. Nothing difficult about that.” Bucky retorted, folding his arms as well. Steve shook his head incredulously.

 

“Nothing difficult..? Buck, what the hell’s gotten into you?” He asked.

 

“Nothing. I told you, the Avengers were coming for you; not me. This was always the plan.” Steve whirled around to face Romanov, who put her hands up defensively.

 

“It’s his decision. We offered him a ride. He turned us down.” She said. Bucky nodded.

 

“She’s right. I said no. Look, you and me, we’ve got the same problem. We’ve both had HYDRA screwing around in our heads. We need different answers though. The Avengers, they’re some of the smartest people on the planet, and beyond it. They can zap your head straight in no time. But me? I need to figure out how to be a person again, and who that person it. I can’t do that with you.”

 

“But I don’t know them. I don’t – Buck, you’re all I’ve got. I don’t want to go without you.” Steve took another step away from the agents.

 

“Yeah, I know.” Bucky sighed. Natasha watched them both, eagle eyed. “But I can’t go with you. I know you don’t understand why-”

 

“You’re right, I don’t understand. You’ve been telling me all these stories about what my life used to be, and I thought that was what I was going back to. Now you’re telling me I’ve got to lose my best friend all over again? That I’ve got to leave you in the middle of nowhere, when HYDRA are still after you, and I’ve got no way of knowing if you’re alive or dead? I won’t do it.” He took another two paces. Bucky stepped back.

 

“But it’s what I need.” He said softly. “I can’t be the person I am now if I’m trying to be the person you remember. And, if I stay with you, I’ll keep trying, because it’ll make you happy and you’re my friend. But that’s not fair to me. I’m not a piece of your story, a wall in your museum exhibit. I’ve got my own story to figure out.”

 

Steve opened his mouth but Bucky held his hand up.

 

“I’m not going to fight you on this. This is my choice, and you can either accept that, or not. If you can’t…” He swallowed. “If you can’t, then that’s it. I’ll never forgive you, and this will be the last time you see me.” The ultimatum was out of his mouth before he realised what he was saying, but he didn’t regret it. It was the truth. He was so sick of be hunted. He couldn’t run from Steve and still be his friend. Not again.

 

“The other me, the one who knew you – He tried to chase you, didn’t he.” It wasn’t a question. Bucky nodded anyway, not trusting himself to speak.

 

Steve glanced at the ground, processing. Behind him, May and Romanov waited impatiently. When Steve looked back at him, Bucky saw fear, desperation and anger flare and fade in his eyes. He couldn’t tell what Steve settled on, but he’d made a decision. Bucky steeled himself for disappointment.

 

“Take care of yourself, okay.” Steve said. Bucky started, nearly dropping his rifle. What? Steve was going to let him go?

 

“Steve, I-”

 

“Don’t do anything stupid.” Steve interrupted, a small smile on his face. Bucky knew that smile. In front of his eyes, the forest changed to a recruiting station and Steve was short and slim, his spine made of steel. Don’t do anything stupid. Bucky had said it to him that first time.

 

“How could I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.” Bucky replied, his insides twisting themselves in knots. In his memories, they’d hugged, but this Steve didn’t know that, had no idea about the significance of those words; he didn’t move towards him and Bucky couldn’t cross the distance. After a long moment Steve turned his back, walking to Romanov and May. Bucky wanted to shout to him but he couldn’t find the words to say.

 

In the end he didn’t have to.

 

Steve stopped before he reached the women, looking back over his shoulder. Bucky met his eyes; Steve shook his head and ran back. He skidded to a stop in front of Bucky and as one they threw their arms around each other. Steve’s grip was so tight he nearly crushed Bucky’s ribs and Bucky’s metal fingers dug deep enough into Steve’s back to bruise.

 

“Be safe.” Steve said into his shoulder. “I’m going to miss you.” Steve let him go and Bucky released him seconds after.

 

“I know. Thank you.” He said roughly. Steve punched him lightly on the shoulder.

  
“You’re my friend. I don’t want to lose you. So if this this is what you need, and this is what I need to do, then it’s not even a choice. I won’t ask you to write me letters, or check in, you’re not a kid. Just – if you’re ever in town, and you’ve got some of those stories you want to share, come call on me. I’ll want to hear all about them.” Bucky smiled, and Steve gave him one last long look.

 

Then he turned, jogged back to Agents Romanov and May and was gone. Bucky watched the gap between two buildings that they’d darted through. Nothing moved. They were gone.

 

Mission complete.

 

Now what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live!
> 
> Guys, my apologies for the delay. Trying to balance work deadlines, my burgeoning theatre career (yay!) and getting so sick I couldn't even wiggle my fingers without hurling means less time for writing then I'd like. The illness aside, it looks like I'll be updating once every fortnight instead of once a week now because of my other responsibilities. 
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone still reading this and enjoying it. Getting the ping in my inbox from a review or a kudos makes my day. I hope this chapter lives up to your expectations.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK folks, it's been a while and it goes without saying that this has been thoroughly Jossed and is not Age of Ultron compliant. Great movie that was too, cuttlefish misrepresentation aside.

Five hours into the drive west, the radio burst into life. May turned up the volume and Steve lurched towards the noise, as if the proximity to the machine might let him hear something his enhanced senses missed. It alternated between static and incoherent yelling, but he was able to make some of it out.   
[We have a visual on the target. Engagi-uhk!]   
[All units converge on his location now! I repeat all units, target sighted in the-]  
[He’s heading east, bearing-]  
[I have a shot – the target is – shit, he’s gone!]  
[We need back-up now; we can’t -]  
[Strike team seventeen has abandoned their posts. I repeat, Strike seventeen, wait, eighteen too! They’re running Sir, they’re-]  
[He’s too fast! Oh god! I’ll kill you, you son of a bi-] [fffffffffffssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhh] *click*

“What was that? Can you get it back?” Steve held tight as the truck reeled over the uneven road, wheels spinning over loose earth. May fiddled with the console, but all she got was empty air. 

“It was the channel HYDRA used to co-ordinate their units. It’s gone, but it doesn’t matter.” She said. “The Winter Soldier is drawing HYDRA away. That’s all we need to know.”

“The diversion is useful.” Natasha said, finding May’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “If they’re sending their manpower east looking for him, we’ve got less to worry about.”

“Less, but it doesn’t mean we’re safe.” May shook her head. “HYDRA has far too many heads for us to assume they’ll all be pointing in the wrong direction.” 

“Then we still need the radio.” Steve said. 

“It’s not necessary.” May replied. 

“What if something else happens out there and they start coming this way? What if they catch Bucky? We need to know about it.” Steve countered.

“We don’t have the time.” May’s eyes narrowed, her mouth a thin line.

“But what if-” May jerked the wheel, swerving around a steep ditch. Steve smacked against the side of the seat.

“We are driving through enemy territory with no back up, no fire power and no plan beyond getting you out. Unless you want to waste the advantage the Winter Soldier is giving us by stopping to recalibrate the radio, I suggest you sit back and let us do our job.” She snapped. The truck juddered as it swung to the side, throwing up gravel. A stone connected with the windscreen and a crack shot across the glass. May pushed on, glaring at the road ahead. 

Steve sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. Was this it? Since he’d woken up, Bucky had been his one constant. Now he had to sit back and relax with strangers he didn’t know or trust, all the while knowing Buck was out there, fighting alone? What if he got hurt? Last time, Steve had been there, watching his back. What if HYDRA got the drop on him again? What if they killed him? 

What if they didn’t? 

Bucky should be in the truck, safe and protected, whilst Steve faced the world and its ugliness. That was what he was for. Captain America was made to protect people, and he was Captain America. He clenched his hands in fists. Steve Rogers was useless. Steve Rogers got his best friend killed. At this rate, Steve Rogers was going to let it happen again.

The truck felt more like a trap than transport. It crept into the edges of his mind, the growl of the engine and the crunch of tires on tarmac invading his thoughts. He wanted to get out. His hands twitched, needing to do something. He didn’t know what. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go. Romanov’s voice broke through the maddening monotony.

“He’ll be fine.” She said it like she hadn’t insinuated one man could demolish an army. Steve bristled. 

“You don’t know that.” He said.

“You don’t know he won’t.” She turned to him, calm. “You heard the radio. They’re already running scared, which in a place like this is half the battle.” She looked at him like she was picking him apart. Steve swallowed. Was she watching him like that because he was acting wrong? Were these things Captain America should know? 

“Is it?” He asked. 

“These soldiers aren’t the elite. They’re farmers, petty criminals, people who fell through the cracks. Some of them want an excuse to cause trouble. Some of them wanted a place to belong. HYDRA offered them what they didn’t have, and they took it. Maybe some of them found out too late what they were getting into and are still there because they’re afraid. I don’t know. The point I’m making is the kind of soldiers you’ll find out here are exactly type who’ll run when they hear out a monster is coming to get them.”

“Don’t call him that.” Steve shot back, but there was no real fire behind it. His mind reeled. All the soldiers he and Bucky had killed, the people they were running from… they were afraid too? Were they only following orders? Romanov’s eyebrows pinched together, her eyes narrowing. 

“Don’t even think about it. You did what you had to do. The men who came after you didn’t give you a choice.” She said. Steve shook his head, his hair falling across his forehead. He pushed it back with a sigh.

“Or we didn’t give them a choice. If we’d known, tried talking to them, they might have-”

“Might have what? Might have backed down, let you go? You think there’s any scenario where you could have walked away without bloodshed? No.” Romanov folded her arms and lifted her chin, fire burning in her eyes. “Those soldiers got their orders, and they chose to follow them. That’s what matters. They could have defected. They could have run away, but they didn’t. They came at you to kill you, or capture you; they knew what the consequences could be. You are not responsible for that.”

She kept her eye on him, and though he found himself unable to look away from her unflinching stare, his mind was elsewhere. It was full of images of bloody, faceless bodies; of Bucky on the ground with a boot on his throat. When Steve had woken up, alone and afraid, he’d killed the first two men he’d seen because they’d pointed their guns at him. He’d acted on instinct. What if they hadn’t been a threat? What if they had doubts about HYDRA? What if they were fighting because they were too scared not too? But if they were going to take him back to HYDRA then he’d done the right thing. There was no way he could have known then, and no way he’d ever know now.

Is this what Steve Rogers would have done before? Would the perfect soldier have any doubts? Would Captain America have killed first and asked questions later? Was he the man they were trying to rescue?

“Okay. I can’t take it back, and they made their own choices to come after us.” He didn’t believe it; the words tasted bitter on his tongue. Romanov nodded, like he’d passed a test he didn’t know he was taking. The truck bounced again, the chassis shuddering and creaking as May pulled from the crumbling road to smoother asphalt. 

“I’m glad to hear it.” Steve’s face betrayed him and she rolled her eyes. “I never said you had to like it Rogers, but you have acknowledge it. You can’t take the weight of the entire world on your shoulders. No one can carry that; it doesn’t matter how strong they are.”

“I said alright. Leave it alone.” He shot back at her. A flicker of hurt crossed her beautiful face, before being quickly hidden behind her mask of professional detachment. 

“Fine.” She shrugged, turning away from him to look out of the back window.

“ETA is three hours.” May said from the front. Steve nodded to her, watching her eyes in the rear view mirror. She spared him one brief glance before turning back to road.

\--(X)--

If the airfield filling the windscreen hadn’t tipped him off as to the location of the rendezvous, the enormous black aeroplane sitting at the end of the runway was a dead giveaway. It dwarfed the run down looking control tower and one story terminal easily, its nose looming over the flat roof. 

They pulled up at the razor wire topped gates, which looked so worn and weathered at first glance they should barely have moved. May pushed them open with one hand. Steve wondered at the detail of it. Was this something the Avengers made? Did they have secret, abandoned looking airstrips secreted around the world for situations like this? If they did, how could they afford to maintain it? Bucky had told him they were a team of six people, but this setup had to mean there was some sort of organisation involved. 

Steve kept his eyes fixed on the plane as they drove closer, the colossal machine filling up more and more of the windscreen. He kept his breathing steady, but his heart pounded in his chest. His hands were sweating too. He catalogued the changes, the way his chest felt constricted and his senses seemed sharper than before. It was a familiar sensation, unpleasant and unwanted. This was fear. 

A ramp in the underside of the plane opened, three figures striding down the steep slope as May pulled up. Steve didn’t let himself falter as they got out and strode towards the bottom of the ramp, but each step he took chilled him, like frost leeching the warmth out of his skin. He kept trying to remember why. What was he afraid of? These were the Avengers, or one of them at least, a comrade he’d trusted with his life before. He wasn’t going into a fight. So what could…? Oh.

Bucky said Steve died in a plane crash. He’d sustained massive blunt force trauma and drowned before freezing solid. 

It must have left one hell of an impression. He could still feel the echo of it, even if he couldn’t remember it. Was he afraid of flying before? Maybe he had enough good memories balance it out before they’d all been ripped away. If he had been scared, was it the kind of thing he told people? Somehow, he didn’t think so. Steve grit his teeth, wiped his hands on his trousers and turned his attention to the group who’d come down to greet them.

The first person was a man with a crisp suit and short hair, his face drawn and his posture stiff. The next was a young woman with long brown hair who was looking him up and down appreciatively. Last stood a man with a goatee and oil in his eyebrows who was scanned him too, measuring him against unknown criteria. Steve stood a little straighter and the oily eyebrows rose. Steve stared back at him levelly. He didn’t blink. Neither did his adversary.

The man in the suit opened his mouth to speak, but the goatee beat him to it.

“Good to have you back Capsicle!” He said cheerfully. “You know, when we tell you to take a vacation this isn’t what we mean, right? But hey, it’s good to know even a nice relaxing trip full of daring rescues and macho bonding, and you know, taking down hordes of your old enemies, hasn’t removed the stick from your ass.”

“Thank you Mr Stark.” The man in the suit said wearily. The wind pulled at the bottom of his jacket. “It’s good to see you safe Captain. Welcome to SHIELD. I’m Director Coulson; we’ll be transporting you back to Stark Tower.” Steve fought down the urge to bolt. This was SHIELD? The same SHIELD Bucky had warned him was infiltrated by HYDRA, rotten to the core and willing to wipe out half the world to reach their goals? And this Coulson was the head of it? He shot a glance at Romanov, but she didn’t return it, staring impassively at the Director. Did she know something he didn’t?

“There are so many things wrong with that.” Stark said, crossing his arms. “Firstly, it’s the Avengers Tower now, I’m not a narcissist. Or, you know, Pepper made me not be a – And you’re walking away. Great. Thanks, fine, I’m used to it.” Stark whipped around to the woman, who was watching him with a bemused expression. “I’m not used to it. I’m Tony Stark, people don’t do that. Coulson. Hey, Coulson!” 

The woman gaped at the two men, Coulson walking away with his head high and Stark dogging his steps, yammering at a mile a minute. She shook her head and took a step toward Steve, her hand outstretched.

“So, they’re awful at introductions.” She said wryly. “That was Phil Coulson, my boss, who is usually better at this, and Tony Stark, professional badass, personal annoyance. I’m Skye, resident hacker genius, and all round super spy.” Steve shook her hand slowly, trying to judge the best way not to crush her delicate fingers. His hand dwarfed hers easily. She smiled and he wondered whether to believe her claim of being a spy. She seemed far different to Romanov and May. 

“It’s awesome to meet you, really.” She continued, “I mean, you’re the guy everyone learns about in class; if you want to be a good person, here’s who you should want to be like, you know? And here I am, rescuing you. Take that traditional gender roles.” She let go of his hand to punch at the air, looking at him expectantly.

“I don’t understand a word of what you just said.” Steve attempted a smile, trying for a cheery look. Skye didn’t seem convinced, her face falling. She shuffled her feet awkwardly, scuffing the toe of her shoe on the asphalt. 

“I guess that makes sense. You finally got all caught up on everything and HYDRA smushes your brain. That sort of thing sets you back.” She shuffled awkwardly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “We should get inside so we can get going. We’re taking a break from saving the world right now, but there are always more bad guys. Come on up, I’ll show you to your room.”

“Thank you.” Steve followed her up, flanked by his two guardian agents. The bus was cavernous on the inside and he suppressed a shiver. The gunmetal grey hold was cold. None of the women seemed to notice. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a flicker of movement, one shadow ducking into some darker corner out of sight. Was it another Avenger? He peered into the darkness for a moment, but nothing else moved.

May and Romanov stayed in the hold whilst he followed Skye upstairs, catching a glimpse of a furnished area. They didn’t get that far. She opened the door to an internal room, gesturing for him to go ahead. He stepped inside, taking in the bare décor, metal table, metal chairs and lack of windows. He couldn’t remember being in a cell, but this was what he imagined one looking like. The bunker in Ukraine had seemed friendlier. Skye stayed outside with her hand on the door. 

“You’ll need to wait in here. Once we’re in the clear airspace wise, one of us will come interview you. The guys are probably all drawing straws at the moment. They’re like kids sometimes. Coulson will be the one to do it though. He might overrule the straw drawing, or rig it so he wins anyway to annoy the others. Either way, have a seat and we’ll be with you shortly. If there’s anything you need, I can get you some food or water, or a coke or something?” She raised an eyebrow. Steve shrugged. “Diet coke?” she tried. 

“Nothing right now.” He said. This must be a formality. For all they knew, he could have some latent HYDRA programming. But for all he knew, these people might be HYDRA themselves. No, Bucky said he could trust them. This had to be a different SHIELD. Bucky would never hand him over to HYDRA. 

“Okay. If you need something later, there’s a camera and a mic in the room, so ask the ceiling and we’ll do our best waiter and waitress impressions.” She smiled at him, then shut the door. It locked with a sharp click. Steve shivered, the chill feeling seeping under his skin. Even the air felt heavy, like he was swimming in it. 

This was fine. It’d all be over soon. These people were going to help. He pulled out a chair and sat down, running his hands over his arms. He didn’t feel any better. He gave up after a minute, looked hopelessly around the empty room, then put his head in his hands.

“Bucky, I hope you’re doing better than I am.”

**

Skye shut the door, feeling the light shudder as the lock fell into place inside the handle. 

“Stand down.” Coulson’s voice was clear in her ear piece, and across the plane, everyone acknowledged the order. Skye closed her eyes, letting out a slow breath. Nothing had happened. It was a good sign. If there was any programming to be triggered, this kind of situation should be at the top of the list – infiltrate an enemy building, disable agents inside, move on to next objective. Yet here he was, in the middle of a SHIELD base, being escorted by a woman he could easily overpower, who had left her back-up downstairs, and he hadn’t made a move. Everything was fine. She waited for her heart to slow down.

She almost jumped out of her skin when a heavy hand landed on her shoulder.

“Ah!” Skye whipped around, her hand drawn back to punch out whoever it was. She stopped when she saw Clint leaning back, his crutches under his elbows, holding up his hands in surrender.

“Whoa, sorry!” He gave her a sheepish smile. “I didn’t think you’d be so jumpy.” Skye dropped her arm, rolling her eyes.

“You work with the Black Widow.” She mouthed Natasha’s codename like it was a summoning spell, meant to call up a fiery headed demon if spoken aloud. Clint snorted, his face going red as he tried not to laugh. “Hey! It’s a high standard I don’t have to reach. I’m not really an agent agent. And anyway, what was that for?”

“To remind you we’re due in the command centre. And because it was funny.” He teased. Skye swatted him across the forearm. Clint pulled his arm back in mock outrage. 

“Hey! How is it you won’t even say my partner’s codename, but me you’re allowed to hit?” He pointed down at his leg, shaking his foot in her direction. “And I’m injured!” He shook his foot harder. “Injured!”

“Hop-along, you’ll pop your stitches if you keep that up.” Tony strolled toward them, eyeing the door warily. “Are you sure that’ll hold him if he tries to get out? It’s not one of my designs.” He mused. Skye shrugged.

“It’s made of a silicone carbide-coated Vibranium alloy. It doesn’t look like much, but it was designed with people like him in mind.” She faltered. “Not specifically like him. We didn’t build a room just for amnesiac super soldiers, but it’s handy now we’ve got one. I’m not saying this right.”

“It’s fine,” Clint waved her off. She gave him a grateful smile.

“It’s flawed.” Tony said, frowning at the external wall. Clint’s face fell into a stony scowl. “The surrounding structural reinforcement isn’t made of the same alloy. The weight distribution of the plane would be all wrong otherwise. It’ll keep him in check for now, but if he wants out, Capsicle could tear the whole plane apart.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag. “Pistachio?”

Clint grabbed a fistful without looking, stuffing them into his pocket and grumbling to himself about people who couldn’t be pleased. Skye looked tempted, but a voice in their ear pieces stopped her.

“We’re preparing for take-off. Our ETA to New York will be eight hours. Make your way to the command centre for debriefing.” Coulson intoned. Tony snorted.

“Come on Agents, you heard the man. Mush!” He waved them on ahead. Clint rolled his eyes and shuffled off, followed by Skye, who internally debated either offering Clint her arm in assistance or kicking his crutch out from under him. 

Tony turned his attention back to the room, his head full of structural calculations and welding details. One faulty seal would be all it would take for a man of Cap’s abilities to tear the place apart, regardless of how the integrity of the building materials. He needed to stay contained until they got to the Tower, where there were special measures in place already. 

Until then, if anyone made noise about Cap coming out earlier for good behaviour, he’d shut them down. There had been something unsettling about Cap which he couldn’t place. Given what Natasha had said about his mind being wiped, maybe he should have expected it, but Cap was just …blank. His face was a façade, hiding the void where the man who’d become his friend should be. 

Whoever was in that room wasn’t coming out, because they weren’t Captain America, and they sure as hell weren’t Steve Rogers either. 

The plane rumbled underneath his feet, shaking him from his thoughts. With one last, distrustful glance at the metal room, he walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author notes are a bore, so long story short, stuff happened to get in the way of my writing, but I'm trying to get back on the horse. On a related note, horses hate me. Make of that what you will.
> 
> I can't say how much of a schedule this will be posted on now, but it'll be better than a chapter every nine months.
> 
> My thanks to anyone reading this, either new reader, or checking out whether this dinosaur had been updated again. You're the reason I write, and i hope you enjoyed this chapter. I'd love to hear from you!

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love any feedback on this. Constructive criticism would be fantastic, but I'll also take anything ranging from 'good stuff' to 'never touch a keyboard again, you affront to literature'
> 
> Cheers guys!


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